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[See p. 232
"'SCANT HEED HAD WE OF THE I^LEET, SWEET HOURS'"
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BY
ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
HOWARD PYLE
Ludit amor sensus, oculos perstringit, el aufert Libertatem animt, ntira nos fascinat arte. Credo altquis desman subiens pracardia. flammam Concitat, et raptam tolltt de cardine mentem "
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS :: MCMV
:C
Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved. Published September, 1905.
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TO
Sloteri (Iambi* (HafoU
(1809-1889)
chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye And of his port as meek as is a mayde, He never yet no vileinye ne sayde In al his lyf, unto no maner wight. He was a verray par fit gentil knyght"
£T
THE EPISODE CALLED ADHELMAR AT
PUYSANGE 5
THE EPISODE CALLED LOVE-LETTERS OF
FALSTAFF 47
THE EPISODE CALLED "SWEET ADELAIS" 81 THE EPISODE CALLED IN NECESSITY'S
MORTAR 121
THE EPISODE CALLED THE CONSPIRACY
OF ARNAYE 169
THE EPISODE CALLED THE CASTLE OF
CONTENT 211
THE EPISODE CALLED IN URSULA'S
GARDEN . . . .. . .. . . 255
ENVOI . 288
"'SCANT HEED HAD WE OF THE FLEET,
SWEET HOURS'" Frontispiect
"HE SANG FOR HER AS THEY SAT IN THE
GARDENS" Facing p.
-.
"HE FOUND MELITE ALONE*' "
"ADHELMAR CLIMBED THE STAIRS SLOWLY, FOR HE WAS GROWING VERY FEEBLE
NOW" "
CATHERINE DE VAUCELLES IN HER GAR- DEN
"'THE KING HIMSELF HAULED ME OUT OF
MEUNG GAOL'"
"VILLON THE SINGER FATE FASHIONED TO
HER LIKING"
" 'TWAS A STRANGE TALE SHE HAD ENDED" "LADY ADELIZA CAME UPON THE BALCONY" " IN THE NIGHT" . ....
MY DEAR MRS. GRUNDY, — You may have observed that nowadays we rank the love- story among the comfits of literature; and we do this for the very excellent reason that man is a thinking animal by courtesy rather than usage.
Rightly considered, the most trivial love- affair is of staggering import. Who are we to question this, when nine-tenths of us owe our existence to a Summer flirtation? And while the workings of a department- store, or the garnering of the world's wheat- crop, or the lamentable inconsistencies of Christianity, are doubtless worthy of our most serious consideration, you will find, my dear madam, that love-affairs, little and big, were shaping history and playing spillikins with sceptres long before any of these delectable matters were thought of.
Yes, they are worthy of consideration; but were it not for the kisses of remote years and the high gropings of hearts no longer animate, there would be none to accord them this same consideration, and a void world would teeter about the sun, silent and naked as an orange. Love is an illusion, if you will ; but always through this illusion, alone, has the next generation been rendered possible.
Love, then, is no trifle. And literature, mimicking life at a respectful distance, may very reasonably be permitted an occasional reference to the corner - stone of all that exists. "A sweet little love-story!" My dear lady, there can be no such thing. Viewed in the light of its consequences, any love-story is of gigantic signification, inasmuch as the most trivial mirrors Nat- ure's unending labor — the peopling of the worlds.
She is uninventive, if you will, this Nature, but she is tireless. Generation by generation she brings it about that for a period weak men may stalk as demi-gods,
while to every woman she grants her hour wherein to spurn the earth, a warm, breath- ing angel. Generation by generation she tricks humanity that humanity may en- dure.
Here for a little I have followed her, the arch - trickster. Through her monstrous tapestry I have traced out for you the windings of a single thread. It is parti- colored, this thread — now black for a mourning sign, and now scarlet where blood has stained it, and now brilliancy itself, — for the tinsel of young love (if, as wise men tell us, it be but tinsel), at least makes a pro- digiously fine appearance until time tarnish it. I entreat you, dear lady, to accept it with assurances of my most distinguished regard.
The gift is not a great one. They are only love-stories, and nowadays nobody takes love very seriously.
And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take Vesuvius very seriously ; it was merely an eligible spot for a fete champetre. And when gaunt fishermen xi
ifitratorg
first preached Christ about the highways, depend upon it, that was not taken very seriously, either. Credat Judceus; but all
sensible folk— such as you and I, my dear madam — passed on with a tolerant shrug, knowing
Their doctrine could be held of no sane man.
APRIL 14, 1355— OCTOBER 23,
" D'aquest segle flac, plen de marrimen, S'amor s'en vai, son joi teinh mensongier
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of-the-way corner of the library at Allonby Shaw, that I first came upon "Les Aven- tures d'Adhelmar de Nointel." The manu- script dates from the early part of the fifteenth century and is attributed — though on no very conclusive evidence, as I think, — to the facile pen of Nicolas de Caen, better known as a lyric poet and satirist (circa 1450).
The story, told in decasyllabic couplets, in- terspersed after a rather unusual fashion with innumerable lyrics, is in the main authentic. Sir Adhelmar de Nointel, born about 1334, was once a real and stalwart personage, a younger brother to that Henri de Nointel, the fighting Bishop of Mantes, whose unsa- vory part in the murder of Jacques van Arteveldt history has recorded at length; and it is with his exploits that the romance deals and perhaps a thought exaggerates. 3
In any event the following is, with certain compressions and omissions that have seemed desirable, the last episode of the " Aventures." For it I may claim, at least, the same merit that old Nicolas does at the very outset ; since as he veraciously declares — yet with a smack of pride :
Cette bonne ystoire n'est pas uste Ni gu&re de lieux jadis trouvee, Ni ecrite par clercz ne fut encore
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HEN Adhelmar had ended the tale of Dame Venus and the love which she bore the knight Tannhauser, he put away the book and sighed. TheDemoiselleMelite laugh- ed a little- -her laughter was high and deli- cate, with the resonance of thin glass — and demanded the reason of his sudden grief.
"I sigh," said he, "for sorrow that this Dame Venus is dead."
" Surely," said she, wondering at his glum face, "that is no great matter."
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"By Saint Vulfran, yes!" Adhelmar pro- tested; "for the same Lady Venus was the fairest of women, as all learned clerks avow ; and she is dead these many years, and now there is no woman left alive so beautiful as she — saving one alone, and she will have none of me. And therefore," he added, very slowly. " I sigh for desire of Dame Venus and for envy of the knight Tann- hauser."
Again Melite laughed, but she forbore — discreetly enough— to question him con- cerning the lady who was of equal beauty with Dame Venus.
It was an April morning, and they sat in the hedged garden of Puysange. Adhel- mar read to her of divers ancient queens and of the love-business wherein each took part — the histories of the Lady Heleine and of her sweethearting with Duke Paris, the Emperor of Troy's son, and of the Lady Melior that loved Parthenopex of Blois, and of the Lady Aude, for love of whom Sieur Roland slew the pagan Angoulaffre, and of the Lady Cresseide that betrayed 6
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love, and of the Lady Morgaine la Fee, whose Danish lover should yet come from Avalon to save France in her black hour of need. All these he read aloud, suavely, with bland modulations, for he was a man of letters, as letters went in those days. Originally, he had been bred for the Church ; but this avocation he had happily forsaken long since, protesting with some show of reason that France at this particular time had a greater need of spears than of aves.
For the rest, Sir Adhelmar de Nointel was known as a valiant knight, who had won glory in the wars with the English. He had lodged for a fortnight at Puysange, of which castle the master, Reinault, the Vicomte de Puysange, was his cousin; and on the next day he proposed to set forth for Paris, where the French King — Jehan the Luckless — was gathering his lieges about him to withstand his kinsman, Edward of England.
Now, as I have said, Adhelmar was cousin
to Reinault, and, in consequence, to Rei-
nault's sister, the Demoiselle Melite; and
7
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the latter he loved, at least, as much as a cousin should. That was well known; and Reinault de Puysange had sworn very heartily that it was a great pity when he had affianced her to Hugues d'Arques. They had both loved her since boyhood, — so far their claims ran equally. But while Adhel- mar had busied himself in the acquisition of some scant fame and a vast number of scars, Hugues had sensibly inherited the fief of Arques, a snug property with fertile lands and a stout fortress. How, then, should Reinault hesitate between them ?
He did not. For the Chateau d'Arques, you must understand, was builded in Lower Normandy, on the fringe of the hill-country, just where the peninsula of Cotentin juts out into the sea ; Puysange stood not far north, among the level lands of Upper Normandy: and these two being the strongest castles in those parts, what more natural and desir- able than that the families should be united by marriage? Reinault informed his sister bluntly of his decision; she wept a little, but did not refuse to comply. 8
Ahljtflmar at
So Adhelmar, come again to Puysange after five years' absence, found M elite troth-plighted, fast and safe, to Hugues. Reinault told him. Adhelmar grumbled and bit his nails in a corner for a time; then laughed shortly.
" I have loved M elite," he said. " It may be that I love her still. Hah, Saint Vulfran ! why should I not ? Why should a man not love his cousin ?"
Adhelmar grinned, while the Vicomte twitched his beard and desired him at the devil.
But he stuck fast at Puysange, for all that, and he and Mdlite were much together. Daily they made parties to dance, and to hunt the deer, and to fish, but most often to rehearse songs. For Adhelmar made good songs. As old Nicolas de Caen says of him earlier in the tale :
Hardi estait et fier comme lions, Et si jaisait balades et chansons, Rondeaulx et laiz, tres bons et pleins de grdce, Comme Orpheus, cet menestrier de Thrace.
it*
To-day, the Summer already stirring in the womb of the year, they sat, as I have said, in the hedged garden; and about them the birds piped and wrangled over their nest - building, and daffodils danced in Spring's honor with lively saltations, and overhead the sky was colored like a robin's egg. It was very perilous weather for young folk. By reason of this, perhaps, when he had ended his reading, Adhelmar sighed again, and stared at his companion with hungry eyes, wherein desire strained like a hound at the leash.
Said Melite: "Was this Lady Venus, then, exceedingly beautiful?"
Adhelmar swore an oath of sufficient magnitude that she was.
Whereupon Melite, twisting her fingers idly and evincing a sudden interest in her own feet, demanded if she were more beau- tiful than the Lady Ermengarde of Arnaye or the Lady Ysabeau of Brieuc.
"Holy Ouen!" scoffed Adhelmar; "the ladies while well enough, I grant you, would seem but callow howlets blinking about
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that Arabian Phoenix that Plinius tells of, in comparison with this Lady Venus that is dead!"
" But how," asked Melite, "was this lady fashioned that you commend so highly? — and how can you know of her beauty that have never seen her?"
Said Adhelmar: "I have read of her fairness in the chronicles of Messire Stace of Thebes, and of Dares, who was her hus- band's bishop. And she was very comely, neither too little nor too big ; she was fairer and whiter and more lovely than any flower of the lily or snow upon the branch, but her eyebrows had the mischance of meeting. She had wide-open, beautiful eyes, and her wit was quick and ready. She was graceful and of demure countenance. She was well- beloved, and could herself love well, but her heart was changeable."
"Cousin Adhelmar," said she, flushing somewhat, for the portrait was like enough, " I think that you tell of a woman, not of a goddess of heathenry."
"Her eyes," said Adhelmar, and his
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voice shook, and his hands, lifting a little, trembled with longing to take her in his arms, — "her eyes were large and very bright and of a color like that of the June sunlight falling upon deep waters ; and her hair was of a curious gold color like the Fleece that the knight Jason sought, and curled marvellously about her temples. For mouth she had but a small red wound ; and her throat was a tower builded of ivory."
But now, still staring at her feet and glowing with the even complexion of a rose, (though not ill-pleased), the Demoiselle Melite bade him desist and make her a song. Moreover, she added, untruthfully, beauty was but a fleeting thing, and she considered it of little importance ; and then she laughed again.
Adhelmar took up the lute that lay beside them and fingered it for a moment, as though wondering of what he would sing. Afterward he sang for her as they sat in the gardens.
Sang Adhelmar:
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"HE SANG FOR HER AS THEY SAT IN THE GARDENS*'
at fug
is vain I mirror forth the praise In pondered virelais
Of her that is the lady of my love; No apt nor curious phrases e'er may tell The tender miracle
Of her white body or the grace thereof.
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" The vext Italian artful-artless strain Is fashioned all in vain:
Sound is but sound; and even her name,
that is
To me more glorious than the glow of fire Or dawn or love's desire
Or song or scarlet or dim ambergris, Mocks utterance.
"7 have no heart to praise The perfect carnal beauty that is hers, But as those worshippers ^ That bore rude offerings of honey and maize,
Of old, toward the stately ministers Of fabled deities, I have given her these, My faltering melodies,
That are Love's lean and ragged mes- sengers."
13
When he had ended, Adhelmar cast aside the lute and groaned, and then caught both her hands in his and strained them to his lips. There needed no wizard to read the message in his eyes.
Melite sat silent for a moment. Presently, "Ah, cousin, cousin!" she sighed, "I cannot love you as you would have me love. God alone knows why, true heart, for I revere you as a strong man and a proven knight ij and a faithful lover; but I do not love you. There are many women who would love you, Adhelmar, for the world praises you, and you have done brave deeds and made good songs and have served your King potently; and yet" — she drew her hands away and laughed a little wearily — "yet I, poor maid, must needs love Hugues, who has done nothing. This love is a strange, unreasoning thing, cousin."
Again Adhelmar groaned. "You love him ?" he asked, in a harsh voice.
"Yes," said Melite, very softly, and afterward flushed and wondered dimly if she had spoken the truth. And then, 14
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somehow, her arms clasped about Adhel- mar's neck, and she kissed him, from pure pity, as she told herself; for Halite's heart was tender, and she could not endure the anguish in his face.
This was all very well. But Hugues d'Arques, coming suddenly out of a pleach- ed walk, at this juncture, stumbled upon them and found their postures distasteful. He bent black brows upon the two.
"Adhelmar," said he, at length, "this world is a small place."
Adhelmar rose quickly to his feet. " In- deed," he assented, with a wried smile, " I think there is scarce room in it for both of us, Hugues."
"That was my meaning," said the Sieur d'Arques.
"Only," Adhelmar pursued, somewhat wistfully, "my sword just now, Hugues, is vowed to my King's quarrel. There are some of us who hope to save France yet, if our blood may avail. In a year, God willing, I shall come again to Puysange; and till then you must wait."
Hugues conceded that, perforce, he must wait, since a vow was sacred ; and Adhelmar knowing his natural appetite for battle to be lamentably squeamish, grinned. After that, in a sick rage, he struck Hugues in the face and turned about.
The Sieur d'Arques rubbed his cheek ruefully. Then he and Melite stood silent for a moment and heard Adhelmar in the court-yard calling his men to ride forth; and Melite laughed; and Hugues scowled.
II
Nirnlaa aa (Humta
(HE year passed, and Adhel- mar did not return; and there was much fighting during that interval, and Hugues began to think that the knight was slain and would trouble him no more. The reflection was borne with equanimity.
So Adhelmar was half-forgot, and the Sieur d'Arques turned his mind to other matters. He was still a bachelor, for Reinault considered the burden of the times in ill-accord with the chinking of marriage- bells. They were grim times for French- men; right and left the English pillaged and killed and sacked and guzzled and drank, as if they would never have done; 17
and Edward of England began to subscribe himself Rex Francice with some show of rea-
son.
• In Normandy men acted according to
their natures. Reinault swore lustily and looked to his defences; and Hugues, seeing the English everywhere triumphant, drew a long face and doubted, when the will of God was made thus apparent, were it the part of a Christian to withstand it? Then he began to write letters, but to whom no man at either Arques or Puysange knew, saving One-eyed Peire, who carried them.
*T was in the dusk of a rain- I sodden October day that Adhelmar rode to the gates . of Puysange, with some score men-at-arms behind him. They came from Poictiers, where again the English had con- quered, and Adhelmar rode with difficulty, for in that disastrous business in the field of Maupertuis he had been run through the chest, and his wound was scarce healed. Nevertheless, he came to finish his debate with the Sieur d'Arques, wound or no wound. But at Puysange he heard a strange tale of Hugues. Reinault, whom he found in a fine rage, told him the story as they sat over their supper.
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It had happened, somehow, (Reinault said), that the Marshal Arnold d'Andreghen — newly escaped from prison and with his disposition unameliorated by Lord Audley's gaolership, — had heard of these letters that Hugues wrote so constantly ; and he, being no scholar, had frowned at such doings, and waited presently with a company of horse on the road to Arques. Into their midst, on the day before Adhelmar came, rode Peire, the one-eyed messenger; and it was not an unconscionable while before he was bound hand and foot, and d'Andreghen was read- ing the letter they had found in his jerkin. "Hang the carrier on that oak," said he, when he had ended, "but leave that largest branch yonder for the writer. For by the Blood of Christ, our common salvation! I will hang him there to-morrow!"
So Peire swung in the air ere long and stuck out a black tongue at the crows, who cawed and waited for supper ; and presently they feasted while d'Andreghen rode to Arques carrying a rope for Hugues.
For the Marshal, you must understand,
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was a man of sudden action. It was but two months before that he had taken the Comte de Harcourt with other gentlemen from the Dauphin's own table to behead them that afternoon in a field back of Rouen. It was true they had planned to resist the gabelle, the King's immemorial right to impose a tax on salt; but Har- court was Hugues's cousin, and the Sieur d'Arques, being somewhat of an epicurean disposition, found the dessert accorded his kinsman unpalatable.
It was no great surprise to d'Andreghen, then, to find that the letter Hugues had written was meant for Edward, the Black Prince of England, now at Bordeaux, where he held the French King, whom he had captured at Poictiers, as a prisoner ; for this prince, though he had no particular love for a rogue, yet knew how to make use of one when kingcraft demanded it, — and, as he afterward made use of Pedro the Castilian, he was now prepared to make use of Hugues, who hung like a ripe pear ready to drop into his mouth. "For," as the
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Sieur d'Arques pointed out in his letter, " I am by nature inclined to favor you brave English, and so, beyond doubt, is the good God. And I will deliver Arques to you; and thus and thus you may take Normandy and the major portion of France; and thus and thus will I do, and thus and thus must you reward me."
Said d'Andreghen: "I will hang him at dawn ; and thus and thus may the devil do with his soul!"
Then with his company he rode to Arques. A herald declared to the men of that place how the matter stood, and bade Hugues come forth and dance upon nothing. The Sieur d'Arques spat curses, like a cat driven into a corner, and wished to fight, but the greater part of his garrison were not willing to do so in such a cause ; and so d'Andreghen took him shortly and carried him off.
In his anger having sworn by the Blood of Christ to hang him to a certain tree, d'Andreghen had no choice in his calm but to abide by his oath. This day being the Sabbath, he deferred the matter; but the
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Marshal promised to see to it that when '^ morning broke the Sieur d'Arques should dangle side by side with his messenger.
Thus far the Vicomte de Puysange. He concluded his narrative with a grim chuckle. " And I think we are very well rid of him, cousin," said he. "Holy Maclou! that I should have taken the traitor for a true man, though! He would sell France, you observe, — chaffered, they tell me, like a pedlar over the price of Normandy. Heh, the huckster, the triple-damned Jew!"
"And Melite?" asked Adhelmar, after a little.
Again Reinault shrugged. " In the White Turret," he said; then, with a short laugh: "Oy Dieus, yes! The girl has been cater- wauling for this shabby rogue all day. She would have me — me, the King's man, look you! — save Hugues at the peril of my seignory ! And I protest to you, by the most high and pious Saint Nicolas the Confessor," Reinault swore, "that sooner than see this huckster go unpunished, I would lock Hell's gate on him with my own hands!" 23
For a moment Adhelmar stood with his jaws puffed out as in thought, and then laughed like a wolf. Afterward he went to the White Turret, leaving Reinault smiling over his wine.
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[E found Melite alone. She had robed herself in black, and had gathered her gold hair about her face like a heavy veil, and sat weep- ing into it for the plight of Hugues d'Arques.
"Melite!" cried Adhelmar; "Melite!" The Demoiselle de Puysange rose with a start and, seeing him standing in the doorway, ran to him, incompetent little hands flut- tering before her like frightened doves. She was very tired, and the man was strength incarnate; surely he, if any one, could aid Hugues and bring him safe out of the grim Marshal's claws. For the moment, perhaps, she had forgotten the 25
feud that existed between Adhelmar and the Sieur d'Arques; but in any event, I am convinced, she knew that Adhelmar could refuse her nothing. So she ran toward him, her cheeks flushing arbutus-like, and already smiling through her tears.
O, thought Adhelmar, were it not very easy to leave Hugues to the dog's death he merits and to take this woman for my own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the soft, thick feel of her hair and the keen scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues
must die that this woman might be his wife.
"You will save him?" Melite asked, and raised her face to his. There was that in her eyes which caused Adhelmar to muse for a little on the nature of women's love, and, subsequently, to laugh harshly and give vehement utterance to an oath.
"Yes!" said Adhelmar. 26
Btfftfr
'HE FOUND MELITE ALONE
He demanded how many of Hugues's men were about. Some twenty of them had come to Puysange, Melite said, in the hope that Reinault might aid them to save their master. She protested that her broth- er was a coward for not doing so; but Adhelmar, having his own opinion on this subject, and thinking in his heart that Hugues's skin might easily be ripped off him without spilling a pint of honest blood, said, simply: "Twenty and twenty is two- score. It is not a large armament, but it will serve."
He told her that his plan was to fall sud- denly upon d'Andreghen and his men that night, and in the tumult to steal Hugues away ; after that, as Adhelmar pointed out, he might readily take ship for England, and leave the Marshal to blaspheme Fortune in Normandy, and the French King to gnaw at his chains in Bordeaux, while Hugues toasts his shins in comfort at Lon- don. Adhelmar admitted that the plan was a mad one, but added, reasonably enough, that needs must when the devil 27
drives. And so firm was his confidence, so cheery his laugh — he managed to laugh somehow, though it was a stiff piece of work — that Melite began to be comforted somewhat, and bade him go and God- speed.
So then Adhelmar left her. In the main hall he found the Vicomte still sitting over his wine.
"Cousin," said Adhelmar, "I must ride hence to-night."
Reinault stared at him for a moment; a mastering wonder woke in his face. " Ta, ta, ta!" he clicked his tongue, very softly. Afterward he sprang to his feet and clutch- ed Adhelmar by both arms. "No, no!" Reinault cried. "No, Adhelmar, not that! It is death, lad, — sure death! It means hanging, boy!" the Vicomte pleaded, trem- ulously, for, grim man that he was, he loved Adhelmar.
"That is likely enough," Adhelmar con- ceded.
"They will hang you," Reinault whis- pered, in a shaking voice; "d'Andreghen 28
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and the Count Dauphin of Vienne will hang you as blithely as they would Iscariot."
"That, too," said Adhelmar, "is likely enough, if I remain in France."
"Oy Dieus! will you flee to England, then?" the Vicomte scoffed, bitterly. " Has King Edward not sworn to hang you these eight years past? Was it not you, then, cousin, who took Almerigo di Pavia, that Lombard knave whom he made governor of Calais, — was it not you, then, who de- livered him to Geoffrey de Chargny, who had him broken on the wheel? Eh, holy Maclou! you will get small comfort of Edward!"
Adhelmar admitted that this was true. "Still," said he, "I must ride hence to- night."
"For her?" Reinault asked, and jerked his thumb upward.
"Yes," said Adhelmar,— " for her."
Reinault stared in his face for a while. " You are a fool, Adhelmar," said he, at last, "but you are a brave man. It is a great pity that a good-for-nothing wench with a 29
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tow-head should be the death of you. For my part, I am the King's vassal ; I shall not break faith with him ; but you are my guest and my kinsman. For that reason I am going to bed, and I shall sleep very sound- ly. It is likely I shall hear nothing of the night's doings, — ohime, no! not if you murder d'Andreghen in the court-yard!" Reinault ended, and smiled, somewhat sadly.
Afterward he took Adhelmar's hand and said: "Farewell, lord Adhelmar! O true knight, sturdy and bold! terrible and merci- less toward your enemies, gentle and simple toward your friends, farewell!" He kissed Adhelmar on either cheek and left him. Men encountered death with very little ado in those days.
Then Adhelmar rode off in the rain with his men. He reflected as he went upon the nature of women and upon his love for the Demoiselle de Puysange ; and, to himself, he swore gloomily that if she had a mind to Hugues she must have him, come what might. Having reached this conclusion, he 3°
AiljHmar
wheeled upon his men and cursed them for tavern-idlers and laggards and flea-hearted snails, and bade them spur.
Melite, at her window, heard them de- part, and stared after them for a while with hand-shadowed eyes; presently the beating of the hoofs died away, and she turned back into the room. Adhelmar's glove, which he had forgotten in his haste, lay upon the floor, and Melite lifted it and twisted it idly in her hands.
"I wonder — ?" said she.
Then she lighted four wax candles and set them before a mirror that was in the room. Melite stood among them and looked into the mirror. She seemed very tall and very slender, and her loosened hair hung heavily about her beautiful shallow face and fell like a cloak around her black-robed body, showing against the black gown like melting gold; and about her were the tall, white candles tipped with still flames of gold. Melite laughed — her laughter was high and delicate, with the resonance of thin glass, — and raised her arms above her head,
stretching tensely like a cat before a fire, and laughed yet again.
"After all," said she, "I do not won- der."
Melite sat before the mirror and braided her hair, and sang to herself in a sweet, low voice, brooding with unfathomable eyes upon her image in the glass, while the rain beat about Puysange, and Adhelmar rode forth to save Hugues that must else be hanged.
Sang M61ite:
"Rustling leaves of the willow-tree Peering downward at you and me, And no man else in the world to see,
"Only the birds, whose dusty coats Show dark i' the green, — whose throbbing
throats Turn joy to music and love to notes.
"Lean your body against the tree, Lifting your red lips up to me, Melite, and kiss, with no man to see!
" And let us laugh for a little: — Yea, Let love and laughter herald the day When laughter and love will be put away,
"And you will remember the willow-tree
© r '
And this very hour, and remember me, Mtlite, — whose face you will no more see!
"So swift, so swift the glad time goes, And Death and Eld with their countless woes Draw near, and the end thereof no man knows.
"Lean your body against the tree, Lifting your red lips up to me, Melite, and kiss, with no man to see!"
m
•\*
Melite smiled as she sang; for this was a song that Adhelmar had made for her at Nointel, before he was a knight, when both were very young.
rfs •
fe
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M
bT was not long before they came upon d'Andreghen and his men camped about a great oak, with One-eyed Peire swinging over their heads like a pennon. A shrill sentinel, somewhere in the dark, demanded their business, but without re- ceiving any adequate answer, for at that moment Adhelmar gave the word to charge.
Then it was as if all the devils in Pan- demonium had chosen Normandy for their playground; and what took place in the night no man saw for the darkness, so that I cannot tell you of it. Let it suffice that in the end Adhelmar rode away before 34
d'Andreghen had rubbed sleep well out of his eyes; and with him were Hugues d'Arques and some half his men. The rest were dead, and Adhelmar himself was very near death, for he had burst open his old wound and it was bleeding under his armor. He said nothing of this.
"Hugues," said he, "do you and these fellows ride to the coast; thence take ship for England."
He would have none of Hugues 's thanks; instead, he turned and left him to whimper out his gratitude to the skies, which spat a warm, gusty rain at him. Then Adhelmar rode again to Puysange, and as he went he sang softly to himself.
Sang Adhelmar:
"D'Andreghen in Normandy Went forth to slay mine enemy;
But as he went
Lord God for me wrought marvellously Wherefore, I may call and cry That am now about to die, I am content!
35
S •>;•-,
Domine ! Domine ! Gratias accipe! Et meum animum Recipe in Coelum!"
z\ h® (
'AW 14
VI u,lmj Kim? at
f sange, Adhelmar climbed the stairs of the White ^ Turret, — slowly, for he was growing very feeble now, — and so came again to Melite crouching among the burned -out candles in the slaty twilight of dawn.
"He is safe," said Adhelmar, somewhat shortly. He told Melite how Hugues was rescued and shipped to England, and how, if she would, she might follow him at dawn in a fishing-boat. "For there is likely to be warm work at Puysange," Adhelmar said, grimly, "when the Marshal comes.
And he will come.'
"And you, cousin?" asked Melite. 3 37
Vr,
Sly* ffittt? 0f
"Holy Ouen!" said Adhelmar; "since I needs must die, I will die in France, not in the cold land of England."
"Die!" cried Melite. "Are you hurt so sorely, then?"
He grinned like a death's-head. "My injuries are not incurable," said he, "yet must I die for all that. The English King will hang me if I go thither, as he has sworn to do these eight years, because of that matter of Almerigo di Pavia: and if I stay in France, I must hang because of this night's work."
Melite wept. "O God! O God!" she quavered, two or three times, like one wounded in the throat. "And you have done this for me! Is there no way to save you, Adhelmar?" she pleaded, with wide, frightened eyes that were like a child's.
"None," said Adhelmar. He took both her hands in his, very tenderly. "Ah, my sweet," said he, "must I whose grave is al- ready digged waste breath upon this idle talk of kingdoms and the squabbling men who rule them ? I have but a brief while 38
ADHELMAR CLIMBED THE STAIRS SLOWLY, FOR HE WAS GROWING VERY FEEBLE
NOW"
to live, and I would fain forget that there is aught else in the world save you and that I love you. Do not weep, Melite ! In a lit- tle time you will forget me and be happy with this Hugues whom you love ; and I ? — ah, my sweet, I think that even in my grave I shall dream of you and of your great beau- ty and of the exceeding love that I bore you in the old days."
"Ah, no, not that!" Melite cried. "I shall not forget, O true and faithful lover! And, indeed, indeed, Adhelmar, I would £0 give my life right willingly that yours might
be saved !" She had forgotten Hugues now. te *? Her heart hungered as she thought of Adhelmar who must die a shameful death for her sake and of the love which she had cast away. The Sieur d'Arques's affection showed somewhat tawdry be- side it.
" Sweet," said he, "do I not know you to { the marrow? You will forget me utterly, for your heart is very changeable. Ah, Mother of God!" Adhelmar cried, with a quick lift of speech; " I am afraid to die, for *-.
W<
t
the harsh dust will shut out the glory of your face, and you will forget!"
"No; ah, no!" Melite whispered, and drew near to him. Adhelmar smiled, a little wistfully, for he did not believe that she spoke the truth ; but it was good to feel her body 'close to his, even though he was dying, and he was content.
But by this the dawn had come com- pletely, flooding the room with its first thin radiance, and Melite saw the pallor of his face and so knew that he was wounded.
"Indeed, yes," said Adhelmar, when she had questioned him, " for my breast is quite cloven through." And when she presently disarmed him, Melite found a great cut in his chest which had bled so much that it was apparent he must die, whether d'An- dreghen and Edward of England would or no.
Melite wept again and cried • " Why had you not told me of this?"
"To have you heal me, perchance?" said Adhelmar. "Ah, love, is hanging, then, so sweet a death that I should choose it,
ftcirv.
rather than to die very peacefully in your arms ? Indeed, I would not live if I might ; for I have proven traitor to my King, and it is right that traitors should die ; and chief of all, I know that life can bring me naught more desirable than I have known this night. What need, then, to live?"
Melite bent over him; for as he spoke he had lain back in a great carven chair set by the window. She was past speech by this. But now, for a moment, her lips clung to his, and her warm tears fell upon his face. What better death for a lover? thought Adhelmar.
Yet he murmured somewhat. "Pity, always pity!" he said, very wearily. "I shall never win aught else of you, Melite. For before this you have kissed me, pitying me because you could not love me. And you have kissed me now, pitying me because I may not live."
But Melite, clasping her arms about his neck, whispered into his ear the mean- ing of this last kiss, and at the honeyed sound of it his strength came back for a 41
moment, and he strove to rise. The level sunlight smote full upon his face, which was very glad.
"God, God!" cried Adhelmar, and spread out his arms toward the dear, familiar world that was slowly taking form beneath them, — a world now infinitely dear to him ; "ah, my God, have pity and let me live a little longer!"
As Melite, half frightened, drew, back from him, he crept out of his chair and fell prone at her feet. Afterward his hands stretched forward toward her, clutching, and then trembled and were still.
Melite stood looking downward, wonder- ing vaguely if she would ever know either joy or sorrow again. So the new day found them.
MARCH 2, 1414
fv " Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul,
that thou soldest him for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg?"
'N the chapel at Puysange you may still see the tomb of Adhelmar; but Me- lite's bones lie otherwhere. "Her heart was changeable," as the old chronicler says, justly enough; and so in due time it was com- forted.
For Hugues d'Arques — or Hugh Darke, as his name was Anglicized — presently stood high in the favor of King Edward. A fief was granted him in Norfolk, where Hugues shortly built for himself a residence at Yaxham and began to look about for a wife; and it was not long before he found one.
This was at Bretigny when, in 1360, the Great Peace was signed between France and England, and Hugues, as one of the English embassy, came face to face with Reinault and Melite. History does not detail the meeting ; but, inasmuch as the Sieur d'Arques and Melite de Puysange were married at Rouen
\s
the following Autumn, doubtless it passed off pleasantly enough.
Melite died three years later, having borne her husband two children : a daughter, Sylvia, born in 1361, who married Sir Robert Vernon of Winstead-in-Norfolk ; and a son, Hugh, born in 1363, who succeeded to his father's estate of Yaxham in 1387, in which year Hugues fell at the battle of Radcot Bridge, fighting in behalf of the ill-fated Richard of Bordeaux.
Now we turn to certain happenings in Eastcheap at the Boar's Head Tavern.
i
iHERE was a sound of scuffling within as Sir John Falstaff, very old now and very shaky after a night of hard drinking, fumbled for a moment at the door of the Angel room. Presently he came into the apartment, singing, as was often his custom when alone, and found Bardolph in one corner busily employed in sorting garments from a clothes-chest, while at the extreme end of the room Mis- tress Quickly demurely stirred the fire; 47
which winked at the old knight rather knowingly.
" Then came the bold Sir Caradoc," caroll- ed Sir John. "Ah, mistress, what news? — And eke Sir Pellinore. — Did I rage last night, Bardolph ? Was I a very Bedlamite ?"
"As mine own bruises can testify," Bardolph assented. "Had each one of them a tongue, they might raise a clamor whereby Babel were as an heir weeping for his rich uncle's death; their testimony would qualify you for any mad -house in England. And if their evidence go against the doctor's stomach, the watchman at the corner hath three teeth — or, rather, had until you knocked them out last night — that will, right willingly, aid him to digest it."
"Three, say you?" asked the knight, sinking into his great chair set ready for him beside the fire. " I would have my valor in all men's mouths, but not in this fashion ; 'tis too biting a jest. I am glad it was no worse; I have a tender conscience, and that mad fellow of the north, Hotspur,
$*
sits heavily upon it; thus, Percy being slain, is per se avenged; a plague on him! We fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock, but I gave no quarter, I promise you ; though, i' faith, the jest is ill-timed. Three, say you? I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is; I would I had 'bated my natural inclination somewhat, and slain less tall fellows by some threescore. I doubt Agamemnon slept not well o' nights. Three, say you? Give the fellow a crown apiece for his mouldy teeth, an thou hast them; an thou hast not, bid him eschew drunkenness, whereby his mis- fortune hath befallen him."
"Indeed, sir," began Bardolph, "I doubt—"
"Doubt not, sirrah!" cried Sir John, testily; and continued, in a virtuous man- ner: "Was not the apostle reproved for that same sin ? Thou art a very Didymus, Bardolph ; — a very incredulous paynim, a most unspeculative rogue! Have I car- racks trading i' the Indies ? Have I robbed the exchequer of late? Have I the Gold- 49
\
>>
en Fleece for a cloak? Sooth, 'tis paltry gimlet; and that augurs not well for his suit. Does he take me for a raven to feed /^ him in the wilderness? Tell him there are no such ravens hereabout ; else had I raven- ously limed the house-tops and set springes in the gutters. Inform him, knave, that my purse is no better lined than his own broken costard; 'tis void as a beggar's protestations, or a butcher's stall in Lent;
IA i. I
light as a famished gnat, or the sighing of a new-made widower; more empty than a last year's bird-nest, than a madman's eye, or, in fine, than the friendship of a king." • " But you have wealthy friends, Sir John," suggested the hostess of the Boar's Head
tf "sa^T
Tavern, who had been waiting with con- siderable impatience for an opportunity to join in the conversation. "Yes, I warrant you, Sir John. Sir John, you have a many wealthy friends; you cannot deny that, Sir John."
"Friends, dame?" asked the knight, and cowered closer to the fire, as though he ,'. were a little cold. " I have no friends since
•^y%,
Hal is King. I had, I grant you, a few score of acquaintances whom I taught to play at dice; paltry young blades of the City, very unfledged juvenals! Setting my knighthood and my valor aside, if I did swear friendship with these, I did swear to a lie. O, 'tis a most censorious world: look you, even these sprouting aldermen, these foul bacon-fed rogues, have eschewed my friendship of late; my reputation hath grown somewhat more murky than Erebus ; no matter! I walk alone, as one that hath the pestilence. No matter! but I grow old; I am not in the vaward of my youth, mistress."
He nodded his head with extreme grav- ity; then reached for a cup of sack that Bardolph held at his elbow.
" Indeed, I know not what your worship will do," said Mistress Quickly, rather sadly.
"Faith!" answered Sir John, finishing the sack and grinning in a somewhat ghastly fashion ; " unless the Providence that watches over the fall of a sparrow hath an
eye to the career of Sir John Falstaff, Knight, and so comes to my aid shortly, I must needs convert my last doublet into a mask, and turn highwayman in my shirt. I will take purses yet, i' faith, as I did at Gadshill, where that scurvy Poins, and he that is now King, and some twoscore other knaves, did rob me; yet I peppered some of them, I warrant you!"
"You must be rid of me, then, master," Bardolph interpolated. " I for one have no need of a hempen collar."
"Ah, well!" said the knight, stretching himself in his chair as the warmth of the liquor coursed through his inert blood ; " I, too, would be loth to break the gallows' back! For fear of halters, we must alter our way of living; we must live close, Bardolph, till the wars make us either Croesuses or food for crows. And if Hal but hold to his bias, there'll be wars; I'll eat a piece of my sword, an he have not need of it shortly. Ah, go thy ways, old Jack; there live not three good men un- hanged in England, and one of them is fat 52
nf 3Ulataff
and grows old. We must live close, Bar- dolph; we must forswear drinking and wenching! There's lime in this sack, you rogue; give me another cup.
" I pray you, hostess," he continued, "re- member that Doll Tearsheet sups with me to-night; have a capon of the best, and be not sparing of the wine. I'll repay you, i' faith, when we young fellows return from France, all laden with rings and brooches and such trumperies like your Norfolkshire pedlars at Christmas-tide. We will sack a town for you, and bring you back the Lord Mayor's beard to stuff you a cushion ; the Dauphin shall be a tapster yet ; we will walk on lilies, I warrant you."
"Indeed, sir," said Mistress Quickly, in perfect earnest, "your worship is as wel- come to my pantry as the mice — a pox on 'em! — think themselves; you are heartily welcome. Ah, well, old Puss is dead ; I had her of Goodman Quickly these ten years since; — but I had thought you looked for the lady who was here but now; — she was a roaring lion among the mice." 4 53
•&.
"What lady?" cried Sir John, with great animation. "Was it Flint the mercer's wife, think you ? Ah, she hath a liberal dis- position, and will, without the aid of Prince Houssain's carpet or the horse of Cambus- can, transfer the golden shining pieces from her husband's coffers to mine."
"No mercer's wife, I think," Mistress Quickly answered, after consideration. " She came in her coach and smacked of gen- tility;— Master Dumbleton's father was a mercer ; but he had red hair ; — she is old ; — and I could never abide red hair."
"No matter!" cried the knight. "I can love her, be she a very Witch of Endor. Observe, what a thing it is to be a proper man, Bardolph! She hath marked me;— in public, perhaps; on the street, it may be; — and then, I warrant you, made such eyes! and sighed such sighs! and lain awake o' nights, thinking of a pleasing portly man, whom, were my besetting sin not modesty, I might name; — and I, all this while, not knowing. Fetch me my Book of Riddles and my Sonnets, that I may 54
SB?
Sffi
of SUlsiaff
speak smoothly. Why was my beard not combed this morning? No matter, 'twill serve. Have I no better cloak than this?" Sir John was in a tremendous bustle, all a-beam with pleasurable anticipation.
But presently Mistress Quickly, who had been looking out of the window, said: " By'r lady, your worship must begin with unwashed hands, for the coach is even now at the door."
"Avaunt, minions!" cried the knight. "Avaunt! Conduct the lady hither, host- ess; Bardolph, another cup of sack. We will ruffle it, lad, and go to France all gold, like Midas! Are mine eyes too red? I must look sad, you know, and sigh very pitifully. Ah, we will ruffle it! Another cup of sack, Bardolph; — I am a rogue if I have drunk to-day. And avaunt! vanish! for the lady comes."
He threw himself into a gallant attitude, suggestive of one suddenly palsied, and with the mien of a turkey-cock strutted toward the door to greet his unknown visitor.
tturo
HE was by no means what he had expected in her per- sonal appearance; at first sight Sir John estimated her age as a trifle upon the staider side of sixty. But to her time had shown consideration, even kindliness, as though he touched her less with intent to mar than to caress; her form was still unbent, and her countenance, bloodless and deep-furrowed, bore the traces of great beauty; and, whatever the nature of her errand, the woman who stood in the doorway was unquestionably a person of breeding.
Sir John advanced toward her with such 56
AV
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grace as he might muster ; to speak plainly, his gout, coupled with his excessive bulk, did not permit an overpowering amount.
"See, from the glowing East, Aurora comes," he chirped. "Madam, permit me to welcome you to my poor apartments; they are not worthy — "
"I would see Sir John Falstaff, sir," said the lady courteously, but with some re- serve of manner, looking him full in the face as she said this.
"Indeed, madam," suggested Sir John, " an those bright eyes — whose glances have already cut my poor heart into as many pieces as the man i' the front of the almanac —will but desist for a moment from such butcher's work and do their proper duty, you will have little trouble in finding the man you seek."
"Are you Sir John?" asked the lady, as though suspecting a jest, or, perhaps, in sheer astonishment. "The son of old Sir John Falstaff, of Norfolk?"
"His wife hath frequently assured me
so," Sir John protested, very gravely; "and
57
€(.
•V
to confirm her evidence I have a certain villanous thirst about me that did plague the old Sir John sorely in his lifetime, and came to me with his other chattels. The property I have expended long since; but no Jew will advance me a maravedi on the Falstaff thirst. 'Tis not to be bought or sold; you might quench it as soon."
"I would not have known you," said the lady, wonderingly; "but," she added, " I have not seen you these forty years."
"Faith, madam," grinned the knight, "the great pilferer Time hath since then taken away a little from my hair, and added somewhat (saving your presence) to my belly; and my face hath not been im- proved by being the grindstone for some hundred swords. But I do not know you." "I am Sylvia Vernon," said the lady. " And once, a long while ago, I was Sylvia Darke."
"I remember," said the knight. His voice was strangely altered. Bardolph would not have known it; nor, perhaps, would he have recognized his master's 58
manner as he handed Mistress Vernon to a
"A long while ago," she repeated, sadly, after a pause during which the crackling 1 of the fire was very audible. "Time hath dealt harshly with us both, John; — the
\iv>j?C w ' LJ
name hath a sweet savor. I am an old woman now. And you —
"I would not have known you," said Sir John; then asked, almost resentfully, "What do you here?"
" My son goes to the wars," she answered, fig " and I am come to bid him farewell ; yet I
* J
may not tarry in London, for my lord is feeble and hath constant need of me. And I, an old woman, am yet vain enough to steal these few moments from him who needs me to see for the last time, mayhap, ^E him who was once my very dear friend."
"I was never your friend, Sylvia," said Sir John.
"Ah, the old wrangle!" said the lady, and
smiled a little wistfully. "My dear and
^& very honored lover, then; and I am come
to see him here."
"Ay!" interrupted Sir John, rather has- tily; then proceeded, glowing with benevo- lence: "A quiet, orderly place, where I bestow my patronage; the woman of the house had once a husband in my company. God rest his soul ! he bore a good pike. He retired in his old age and 'stablished this tavern, where he passed his declining years, till death called him gently away from this naughty world. God rest his soul, say I!"
This was a somewhat euphemistic version of the taking-off of Goodman Quickly, who had been knocked over the head with a joint-stool while rifling the pockets of a drunken guest ; but perhaps Sir John wished to speak well of the dead.
"And you for old memories' sake yet aid his widow?" the lady murmured. "Tis like you, John."
There was another silence, and the fire crackled more loudly than ever.
"You are not sorry that I came?" Mis- tress Vernon asked, at last.
" Sorry ?" echoed Sir John ; and, ungallant 60
as it was, hesitated a moment before reply- ing: "No, i' faith! But there are some ghosts that will not easily bear raising, and you have raised one."
"We have summoned up no very fearful ghost, I think," said the lady; "at most, no 'worse than a pallid, gentle spirit that speaks — to me, at least — of a boy and a girl that loved one another and were very happy a great while ago."
"Are you come hither to seek that boy?" asked the knight, and chuckled, though not merrily. "The boy that went mad and rhymed of you in those far-off dusty years? He is quite dead, my lady; he was drowned, mayhap, in a cup of wine. Or he was slain, perchance, by a few light women. I know not how he died. But he is quite dead, my lady, and I was not haunted by his ghost until to-day."
He stared down at the floor as he ended ; then choked, and broke into a fit of cough- ing that he would have given ten pounds, had he possessed them, to prevent.
" He was a dear boy," she said, presently; 61
"a boy who loved a woman very truly; a boy that, finding her heart given to another, yielded his right in her, and went forth into the world without protest."
"Faith!" admitted Sir John, "the rogue had his good points."
"Ah, John, you have not forgotten, I know," the lady said, looking up into his face, "and you will believe me that I am very heartily sorry for the pain I brought into your life?"
"My wounds heal easily," said Sir John.
"For though I might not accept your love, believe me — ah, believe me, John, I always knew the value of that love; 'tis an honor that any woman might be proud of."
"Dear lady," the knight suggested, with a slight grimace, "the world is not alto- gether of your opinion."
" I know not of the world," she said ; '' for we live very quietly. But we have heard of you ever and anon; I have your life quite letter-perfect for these forty years or more."
62
"You have heard of me?" asked Sir John; and he looked rather uncomfortable.
"As a gallant and brave soldier," she answered; "of how you fought at sea with Mowbray that was afterward Duke of Norfolk; of your knighthood by King Richard; and how you slew the Percy at Shrewsbury; and captured Coleville o' late in Yorkshire ; and how the Prince, that now is King, did love you above all men ; and, in fine, I know not what."
Sir John heaved a sigh of relief. He said, with commendable modesty: "I have fought somewhat. But we are not Bevis of Southampton; we have slain no giants. Heard you naught else?"
"Little else of note," replied the lady; and went on, very quietly: "But we are proud of you at home. And such tales as I have heard I have woven together in one story; and I have told it many times to my children as we sat on the old Chapel steps at evening, and the shadows length- ened across the lawn ; and bid them emulate this, the most perfect knight and gallant 63
jteafi
gentleman that I have known. And they love you, I think, though but by repute."
Once more silence fell between them ; and the fire grinned wickedly at the mimic fire reflected by the old chest, as though it knew of a most entertaining secret.
"Do you yet live at Winstead?" asked Sir John, half idly.
"Yes," she answered; "in the old house. It is little changed, but there are many changes about."
" Is Moll yet with you that did once carry our letters?" queried the knight.
" Married to Hodge, the tanner," the lady said; "and dead long since."
"And all our merry company?" Sir John demanded. "Marian? And Tom and little Osric? And Phyllis? And Adelais? Tis like a breath of country air to speak their names once more."
"All dead," she answered, in a hushed voice, "save Adelais, and she is very old; for Robert was slain in the French wars, and she hath never married."
"All dead," Sir John informed the fire, 64
' y~r\
of 3Falsiaff
confidentially; then laughed, though his bloodshot eyes were not merry. "This same Death hath a wide maw! 'Tis not long before you and I, my lady, will be at supper with the worms. But you, at least, have had a happy life."
"I have been happy," she said, "but I am a little weary now. My dear lord is very infirm, and hath grown querulous of late, and I, too, am old."
"Faith!" agreed Sir John, "we are both old ; and I had not known it, my lady, until to-day."
Again there was silence; and again the r fire leapt with delight at the jest.
Mistress Vernon rose suddenly and cried, " I would I had not come!"
" 'Tis but a feeble sorrow you have brought," Sir John reassured her. He continued, slowly, " Our blood runs thinner than of yore; and we may no longer, I think, either sorrow or rejoice very deeply."
"It is true," she said; "but I must go;
and, indeed, come!"
I would to God I had not
Sin* nf San*
Sir John was silent; he bowed his head, in acquiescence perhaps, in meditation it may have been ; but he said nothing.
"Yet," said she, "there is something here that I must keep no longer; 'tis all the letters you ever writ me."
Whereupon she handed Sir John a little packet of' very old and very faded papers. He turned them over awkwardly in his hand once or twice; then stared at them; then at the lady.
"You have kept them — always?" he cried.
"Yes," she responded, wistfully; "but I must not any longer. Tis a villanous ex- ample to my grandchildren," Mistress Ver- non added, and smiled. "Farewell."
Sir John drew close to her and caught her by both wrists. He looked into her eyes for an instant, holding himself very erect,— and it was a rare event when Sir John looked anyone squarely in the eyes, — and said, wonderingly, "How I loved you!"
"I know," she murmured. Sylvia Ver- non gazed up into his bloated face with a 66
;•
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<£ $£
proud tenderness that was half-regretful. A catch came into her gentle voice. " And I thank you for your gift, my lover, — O brave true lover, whose love I was ne'er ashamed to own! Farewell, my dear; yet a little while, and I go to seek the boy and girl we wot of."
"I shall not be long, madam," said Sir John. "Speak a kind word for me in Heaven; for," he added, slowly, "I shall have sore need of it."
She had reached the door by this. " You are not sorry that I came?" she pleaded.
Sir John answered, very sadly: "There are many wrinkles now in your dear face, my lady ; the great eyes are a little dimmed, and the sweet laughter is a little cracked; but I am not sorry to have seen you thus. For I have loved no woman truly save you alone; and I am not sorry. Farewell." And for a moment he bowed his unreverend gray head over her shrivelled fingers.
^
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jORD, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!" chuckled Sir John, and threw himself back in his chair and mumbled over the jest. "Yet 'twas not all a lie," he confided, in some perplexity, to the fire ; " but what a coil over a youthful green-sickness 'twixt a lad and a wench more than forty years syne!
" I might have had money of her for the asking," he presently went on; "yet I am glad I did not ; which is a parlous sign and smacks of dotage."
68
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of 3Ulstaff
He nodded very gravely over this new and alarming phase of his character.
"Were't not a quaint conceit, a merry tickle-brain of Fate," he asked of the leap- ing flames, after a still longer pause, "that this mountain of malmsey were once a delicate stripling with apple cheeks and a clean breath, smelling o' civet, and as mad for love, I warrant you, as any Amadis of them all? For, if a man were to speak truly, I did love her.
" I had the special marks, of the pesti- lence," he assured a particularly incredu- lous- and obstinate-looking coal, — a grim, a black fellow that, lurking in a corner, scowled forbiddingly and seemed to defy both the flames and Sir John : " Not all the flagons and apples in the universe might have comforted me ; I was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the fag-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and what not of mine own.
"And Moll did carry them," he con- 5 69
tinued; "Moll that hath married Hodge, the tanner, and is dead long since." But the coal remained incredulous, and the flames crackled merrily.
"Lord, Lord, what did I not write?" said Sir John, drawing out a paper from the packet, and deciphering the faded writing by the firelight.
Read Sir John :
" Have pity, Sylvia ! For without thy door Now stands with dolorous cry and clam- oring Faint-hearted Love, that there hath stood of
yore: Though Winter draweth on, and no birds
sing Within the woods, yet as in wanton
Spring
He follows thee; and never will have done, Though nakedly he die, from following Whither thou leadest.
" Canst thou look upon His woes, and laugh to see a goddess' son Of wide dominion and great empery, 70
(57
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strong than Jove, more wise than Solomon,
Too weak to combat thy severity? Have pity, Sylvia! And let Love be one Among the folk that bear thee company.
" Is't not the very puling speech of your true lover?" he chuckled; and the flames spluttered assent. "Among the folk that bear thee company," he repeated, and after- > ward looked about him with a smack of gravity. " Faith, Adam Cupid hath for- sworn my fellowship long since ; he hath no score chalked up against him at the Boar's Head Tavern ; or, if he have, I doubt not a beggar might discharge it.
"And she hath commended me to her children as a very gallant gentleman and a true knight," he went on, reflectively. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling, and grinned at invisible deities. "Jove that sees all hath a goodly commodity of mirth ; I doubt not his sides ache at times, as they had conceived another wine-god.
"Yet, by my honor," he insisted to the
IGute of
fire; then added, apologetically, — "if I had any, which, to speak plain, I have not, — I am glad; it is a brave jest; and I did love her once."
He picked out another paper and read: "'My dear lady, — That I am not with thee to-night is, indeed, no fault of mine; for Sir Thomas Mowbray hath need of me, he saith. Yet the service that I have rendered him thus far is but to cool my heels in his antechamber and dream of two great eyes and of that net of golden hair wherewith Lord Love hath lately snared my poor heart. For it comforts me — ' And so on, and so on, the pen trailing most juvenal sugar, like a fly newly crept out of the honey -pot. And ending with a posy, filched, I warrant you, from some ring.
" I remember when I did write her this," he explained to the fire. "Lord, Lord, an the fire of grace were not quite out of me, now should I be moved. For I did write it ; and 'twas sent with a sonnet, all of Hell, and Heaven, and your pagan gods, and other tricks o' speech. It should be somewhere." 72
He fumbled with uncertain fingers among the papers. "Ah, here 'tis," he said at last, and again began to read aloud.
Read Sir John :
"Cupid invaded Hell, and boldly drove Before him all the hosts of Erebus Till he had conquered ; and grim Cerberus Sang madrigals, the Furies rhymed of love, Old Charon sighed, and sonnets rang above The gloomy Styx, and even as Tantalus Was Proserpine discrowned in Tartarus, And Cupid regnant in the place thereof.
" Thus Love is monarch throughout Hell to- day;
In Heaven we know his power was al- ways great; And Earth acclaimed Love's mastery straightway
When Sylvia came to gladden Earth's
estate :
Thus Hell and Heaven and Earth his rule obey,
A vgy /*""
And Sylvia's heart alone is obdurate.
"Well, well," sighed Sir John, "'twas a goodly rogue that writ it, though the verse runs but lamely! A goodly rogue!
"He might," he suggested, tentatively, "have lived cleanly, and forsworn sack; he might have been a gallant gentleman, and begotten grandchildren, and had a quiet nook at the ingleside to rest his old bones: but he is dead long since. He might have writ himself armigero in many a bill, or obligation, or quittance, or what not; he might have left something behind him save unpaid tavern bills; he might have heard cases, harried poachers, and quoted old saws ; and slept through sermons yet unwrit, beneath his presentment, done in stone, and a comforting bit of Latin: but," he reassured the fire, "he is dead long since."
Sir John sat meditating for a while; it had grown quite dark in the room as he muttered to himself. Suddenly he rose with a start.
"By'r lady!" he cried, "I prate like a death's-head! What's done is done, God
r
ha' mercy on us all! And I'll read no more of the rubbish."
He cast the packet into the heart of the fire ; the yellow papers curled at the edges, rustled a little, and blazed; he watched them burn to the last spark.
"A cup of sack to purge the brain!" cried Sir John, and filled one to the brim. "And I'll go sup with Doll Tearsheet."
SEPTEMBER 29, 1422
Anoon her herte hath pitee of his wo,
And with that pitee, love com in also;
Thus is this quene in plcasaunce and in loye.
/
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FIND on consultation of the Allonby records that Sylvia Vernon died of a quinsy in 1419, surviving her husband by some three months. She had borne him four sons and two daughters; and of these there remained at Winstead in 1422 only Sir Hugh Vernon, the oldest son, knighted by Henry V. at Agincourt, where Vernon had fought with distinction; and Adelais Vernon, the younger daughter, with whom the follow- ing has to do.
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T was on a clear Septem- ber day that the Marquis of Falmouth set out for France. John of Bedford had summoned him post- haste when Henry V. was stricken at Senlis with what bid fair to prove a mortal distemper; for the marquis was Bedford's comrade-in-arms, veteran of Shrewsbury, Agincourt and other martial disputations, and the Duke -Regent sus- pected that, to hold France in case of the 81
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Sin* of Sou*
King's death, he would presently need all the help he could muster.
"And I, too, look for warm work," the marquis conceded to Mistress Adelais Ver- non, at parting. " But, God willing, my sweet, we shall be wed at Christmas for all that. The Channel is not very wide. At a pinch I might swim it, I think, to come to you."
Then he kissed her and rode away with his men. Adelais stared after them, striv- ing to picture her betrothed rivalling Leander in this fashion, and subsequently laughed. The marquis was a great lord and a brave captain, but long past his first youth; his blood ran somewhat too sluggishly ever to be roused to the high lunacies of the Sestian amorist. But a mo- ment later, recollecting the man's cold desire of her, his iron fervors, Adelais shuddered.
This was in the court-yard at Winstead. Roger Darke of Yaxham, her cousin, stand- ing beside her, noted the gesture and snarled.
"Think twice of it, Adelais," said he.
Whereupon Mistress Vernon flushed like 82
a peony. "I honor him," she said, with some irrelevance, "and he loves me."
"Love, love!" Roger scoffed. "O you piece of ice ! You gray-stone saint ! What do you know of love?" On a sudden Mas- ter Darke caught both her hands in his. " Now, by Almighty God, our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ!" he said, between his teeth, his eyes flaming ; " I, Roger Darke, have offered you undefiled love and you have mocked at it. Ha, Tears of Mary! how I love you! And you mean to marry this man for his title ! Do you not believe that I love you, Adelais?" he whimpered.
Gently she disengaged herself. This was of a pattern with Roger's behavior any time during the past two years. "I sup- pose you do," Adelais conceded, with the tiniest possible shrug. "Perhaps that is why I find you so insufferable."
Afterward Mistress Vernon turned on her heel and left Master Darke. In his fluent invocation of Mahound and Terma- gaunt and other overseers of the damned he presently touched upon eloquence.
O&n* roiily
iDELAIS came into the walled garden of Winstead, aflame now with Autumnal scarlet and gold. There she seated herself upon a semi- circular marble-bench, and laughed for no apparent reason, and con- tentedly waited what Dame Luck might send. She was a comely maid, past argument or (as her lovers habitually complained) any adequate description. Circe, Colchian Medea, Viviane du Lac, were their favorite analogues; and what old romancers had fabled concerning these ladies they took to be the shadow of which Adelais Vernon was the substance. At times they might have supported this contention with a certain 84
speciousness. As to-day, for example, when against the garden's hurly-burly of color, the prodigal blazes of scarlet and saffron and wine-yellow, her green gown glowed like an emerald, and her eyes, too, were emeralds, vivid, inscrutable, of a clear verdancy that was quite untinged with either blue or gray. Very black lashes shaded them. The long oval of her face, (you might have objected), was of an ab- solute pallor, rarely quickening to a flush; but her petulant lips burned crimson, and her hair mimicked the dwindling radiance of the Autumn sunlight and shamed it. All in all, the beauty of Adelais Vernon was, beyond any questioning, spiced with a sorcerous tang ; say, the beauty of a young witch shrewd at love-potions, but ignorant of their flavor ; yet before this it had stirred men's hearts to madness, and the county boasted it.
Presently Adelais lifted her small im- perious head, and then again she smiled, for out of the depths of the garden, with an embellishment of divers trills and rou- 6 85
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lades, there came a man's voice that carolled blithely.
Sang the voice:
"Had you lived when earth was new What had bards of old to do Save to sing the song of you ?
" Had you lived in ancient days, Adelais, sweet Adelais, You had all the ancients' praise, — You whose beauty might have won Canticles of Solomon, Had the old Judean king E'er beheld the goodliest thing Earth of Heaven's grace hath got.
"Had you gladdened Greece, were not All the nymphs of Greece forgot?
"Had you trod Sicilian ways, Adelais, sweet Adelais, You had pilfered all their praise : Bion and Theocritus Had transmitted unto us
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Honeyed sounds and songs to tell Of your beauty's miracle, Delicate, desirable, And their singing skill were bent You alone to praise, content, While the world slipped by, to gaze On the grace of 'you and praise Sweet Adelais."
Here the song ended, and a man, wheel- ing about the hedge, paused and regarded her with adoring eyes. Adelais looked up at him, incredibly surprised by his coming.
This was the young Sieur d'Arnaye, Hugh Vernon's prisoner, taken at Agin- court seven years earlier and held since then, by the King's command, without ransom; for it was Henry's policy to re- lease none of the important French prison- ers. Even on his death-bed he found time to admonish his brother, John of Bed- ford, that four of these — Charles d'Orleans and Jehan de Bourbon and Arthur de Rougemont and Fulke d'Arnaye — should never be set at liberty. " Lest," as he said, 87
®lj* Sttt*
with a savor of prophecy, "more fire be kindled in one day than may be quenched in three."
Presently the Sieur d'Arnaye sighed, rather ostentatiously; and Adelais laughed and demanded the cause of his grief.
"Mademoiselle," he said, — his English had but a trace of accent, — " I am afflicted with a very grave malady."
"And the name of this malady?" said she.
"They call it love, mademoiselle."
Adelais laughed yet again and doubted if the disease were incurable. But Fulke d'Arnaye seated himself beside her and demonstrated that, in his case, it might never be healed.
"For it is true," he observed, "that the ancient Scythians, who lived before the moon was made, were wont to cure this distemper by blood-letting under the ears; but your brother, mademoiselle, denies me access to all knives. And the leech ^Elian avers that it may be cured by the herb agnea; but your brother, mademoiselle,
5
will not permit that I go into the fields in search of this herb. And in Greece — he", mademoiselle. I might easily be healed of my malady in Greece! For there is the rock, Leucata Petra, from which a lover may leap and be cured ; and the well of the Cyziceni, from which a lover may drink and be cured; and the river Selemnus, in which a lover may bathe and be cured : and your brother will not permit that I go to Greece. You have a very cruel brother, mademoiselle; seven long years, no less, he has penned me here like a starling in a cage." And Fulke d'Arnaye shook his head at her reproachfully.
Afterward he laughed. Always this Frenchman found something at which to laugh; Adelais could not remember in all the seven years a time when she had seen him downcast. But now as his lips jested of his imprisonment, his eyes stared at her mirthlessly, like a dog at his master, and her gaze fell before the candor of the passion she saw in them.
"My lord," said Adelais, "why will you 89
t &'
not give your parole? Then might you be free to come and go as you would." A little she bent toward him, a covert red showing in her cheeks. " To-night at Hal- vergate the Earl of Brudenel holds the feast of Saint Michael. Give your parole, my lord, and come with us. There will be fair ladies in our company who may perhaps heal your malady."
But the Sieur d'Arnaye only laughed. "I cannot give my parole," he said, "since I mean to escape for all your brother's care." Then he fell to pacing up and down before her. "Now, by Monseigneur Saint M<§dard and the Eagle that sheltered him!" he cried, in half - humorous self - mockery ; "however thickly troubles rain upon me, I think that I shall never give up hoping!" After a pause, "Listen, mademoiselle," he went on, more gravely, and gave a nervous gesture toward the east, " yonder is France, sacked, pillaged, ruinous, prostrate, naked to her enemy. But at Vincennes, men say, the butcher of Agincourt is dying. With him dies the English power in France. Can 90
his son hold that dear realm, think you Are those tiny hands with which he may yet feed himself capable to wield a sceptre Can he who is yet beholden to nurses milk distribute sustenance to the law and justice of a nation ? He\ I think not, madem- oiselle ! France will have need of me short- ly. Therefore, I cannot give my parole."
"Then must my brother still lose his sleep, lord, for always your safe-keeping is in his mind. Only to-day he set out for the coast at cock-crow to examine those French- men who landed yesterday."
At this he wheeled about. " Frenchmen !"
" Only Norman fishermen, lord, whom the storm drove to seek shelter in England. But he feared they had come to rescue you."
Fulke d'Arnaye shrugged his shoulders. "That was my thought, too," he said, with a laugh. "Always I dream of escape, mademoiselle. Have a care of me, sweet enemy! I shall escape yet, it may be."
"But I will not have you escape," said Adelais. She tossed her glittering little head. "Winstead would not be Winstead 91
Sly* Ettt* 0f Unit*
without you. Why, I was but a child, my lord, when you came. Have you forgotten, then, the lank, awkward child who used to stare at you so gravely?"
"Mademoiselle," he returned, and now his voice trembled and still the hunger in his eyes grew more great, " I think that in all these years I have forgotten nothing — not even the most trivial happening, mad- emoiselle,— wherein you had a part. You were a very beautiful child. Look you, I remember as if it were yesterday that you never wept when your good lady mother — whose soul may Christ have in his keeping! —was forced to punish you for some little misdeed. No, you never wept; but your eyes would grow wistful, and you would come to me here in the garden, and sit with me for a long time in silence. 'Fulke,' you would say, quite suddenly, ' I love you better than my mother.' And I told you that it was wrong to make such observa- tions, did I not, mademoiselle? My faith, yes! but I may confess now that I liked it," Fulke d'Arnaye ended, with a faint chuckle. 92
Alulafs
Adelais sat motionless; but she trembled a little. Certainly it was strange, she thought, how the sound of this man's voice had power to move her.
"And now the child is a woman, — a woman who will presently be Marchioness of Falmouth. Look you, when I get free of my prison — and I shall get free, never fear, mademoiselle, — I shall often think of that great lady in France yonder. For only God can curb a man's dreams, and God is com- passionate. So I hope to dream nightly of a gracious lady whose hair is gold and whose eyes are colored like the Summer sea and whose voice is clear and low and very won- derfully sweet. Nightly, I think, the vision of that dear enemy will hearten me to fight for France by day. In effect, mademoiselle, your traitor beauty will yet aid me to destroy your country. ' ' The Sieur d'Arnaye laughed, somewhat cheerlessly, as he lifted her hand to his lips.
Certainly it was strange, she thought, how his least touch was an alarum to her pulses. Adelais drew away from him, half in fear. 93
"No; ah, no!" she panted; "remember, lord, I, too, am not free."
" Indeed, we tread on dangerous ground," the Frenchman assented, with a sad little smile. " Pardon me, mademoiselle. Even were you free of your troth-plight — even were I free of my prison, most beautiful lady, I have naught to offer you yonder in that fair land of France. They tell me that the owl and the wolf hunt undisturbed o' nights where Arnaye once stood. My chateau is carpeted with furze and roofed with God's Heaven. That gives me a large estate — does it not? — but I may not rea- sonably ask a woman to share it. So I pray you pardon me, mademoiselle, and I pray that the Marchioness of Falmouth may be very happy."
And with that he vanished into the Autumn-fired recesses of the garden, sing- ing, his head borne stiff. O, the brave •man who esteemed misfortune so slightly! thought Adelais. She remembered that the Marquis of Falmouth rarely smiled; and once only — at a bull-baiting — had she heard 94
him laugh. It needed bloodshed, then, to amuse him. Adelais shuddered.
But through the scarlet coppices of the garden, growing fainter and yet more faint, rang the singing of Fulke d'Arnaye.
Sang the Frenchman:
" Had you lived in Roman times No Catullus in his rhymes Had lamented Lesbia's sparrow: He had praised your forehead, narrow As the newly-crescent moon, White as apple-trees in June; He had made some amorous tune Of the laughing light Eros Snared as Psyche-ward he goes By your beauty, — by your slim, White, perfect beauty.
"After him
Horace, finding in your eyes Horace throned in Paradise, Would have made you melodies Fittingly to hymn your praise, Sweet Adelais."
III
is
>NTO the midst of the Michaelmas festivities at Halvergate that night, there burst a mud -splat- tered fellow in search of Sir Hugh Vernon. Roger Darke brought him to the knight. He came, he said, from Simeon de Beck, the master of Castle Rising, with tidings that a strange boat, French-rigged, was hovering about the north coast. Let Sir Hugh have a care of his prisoner.
Vernon swore roundly. " I must look into this," he said. "But what shall I do with Adelais?"
" Will you trust her to me ?" Roger asked. "If so, cousin, I will very gladly be her 96
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escort to Winstead. Let the girl dance her fill while she may, Hugh. She will have little heart for dancing after a month or of Falmouth's company."
"That is true," Vernon assented; "but the match is a good one, and she is bent upon it."
So presently he rode with his men to the north coast. An hour later Roger Darke and Adelais set out for Winstead, in spite of all Lady Brudenel's protestations that Mistress Vernon had best lie with her that night at Halvergate.
It was a moonlit night, cloudless, neither warm nor chill, but fine late September weather. About them the air was heavy with the damp odors of decaying leaves, for the road they followed was shut in by the Autumn woods, that now arched the way with sere foliage, rustling and whirring and thinly complaining overhead, and now left it open to broad splashes of moonlight, where fallen leaves scuttled about in the wind vortices. Adelais, elate with dancing, chat- tered of this and that as her gray mare 97
Situ 0f Sotte
ambled homeward, but Roger was some- what moody.
Past Upton the road branched in three directions; and here on a sudden Master Darke caught the gray mare's bridle and turned both horses to the left.
"Roger!" the girl cried, "Roger, this is not the road to Winstead!"
He grinned evilly over his shoulder. " It is the road to Yaxham, Adelais, where my chaplain expects us."
In a flash she saw it all as her eyes swept the desolate woods about them. " You will not dare!"
"Will I not?" said Roger. "Faith, for my part, I think you have mocked me for the last time, Adelais, since it is the wife's duty, as Paul very justly says, to obey."
Swiftly she slipped from the mare. But he followed her. "O God! O God!" the girl cried. "You have planned this, you coward!"
"Yes, I planned it," said Roger Darke. " Yet I take no great credit therefor, for it was simple enough. I had but to send a 98
feigned message to your block-head brother. Ha, yes, I planned it, Adelais, and I planned it well. To-morrow you will be Mistress Darke, never fear."
And with that he grasped at her cloak as she shrank from him. The garment fell, leaving the girl momentarily free, her festival jewels shimmering in the moon-
s
light, her bared shoulders glistening like silver. Darke, staring at her, giggled hor- ribly. An instant later Adelais fell upon her knees, sobbing, the dead leaves under her crackling sharply in the silence.
" Sweet Christ have pity upon Thy hand- maiden! Do not forsake me, sweet Christ, in my extremity ! Save me from this man !" she prayed, with an entire faith.
"My lady wife," said Darke, and his hot, wet hand sank heavily upon her shoulder, " you had best finish your prayer before my chaplain, I think, since by ordinary Holy Church is skilled to comfort the sorrow-
ing."
"A miracle, dear lord Christ!" the girl wailed. "O sweet Christ, a miracle!" 99
" Faith of God!" said Roger, in a flattish tone; "what was that?"
For faintly there came the sound of one singing.
Sang the distant voice:
" Beatric^ were unknown On her starlit Heavenly throne Were sweet Adelais but seen By the youthful Florentine.
"Ah, had he but seen your face, Adelais, sweet Adelais, High-exalted in her place, — Caph, Aldebaran, Nibal, Tapers at the festival,— You had heard Zachariel Sing of you, and singing, tell All the grace of you, and praise Sweet Adelais."
Vfri
Imuir Brings a
DELAIS sprang to her feet. "A miracle!" she cried, her voice shaking. "Fulke, Fulke! to me, Fulke!"
Master Darke hurried her struggling toward his horse, muttering curses in his beard, for there was now the beat of hoofs in the road yonder that led to Winstead. " Fulke, Fulke !" the girl shrieked.
Then presently, as Roger put foot to stirrup, two horsemen wheeled about the bend in the road, and one of them leapt to the ground.
"Mademoiselle," said Fulke d'Arnaye, " am I, indeed, so fortunate as to be of any service to you?"
x*
101
"Ho!" cried Roger, with a gulp of relief, "it is only the French dancing-master tak- ing French leave of poor cousin Hugh! Man, but you startled me!"
Now Adelais ran to the Frenchman, clinging to him in a sort of frenzy, sobbing out the whole foul story. His face set mask-like.
"Monsieur," he said, when she had ended, "you have wronged a sweet and innocent lady. As God lives, you shall answer to me for this."
"Look you," Roger pointed out, "this is none of your affair, Monsieur Jackanapes. You are bound for the coast, I take it. Very well, — ka me, and I'll ka thee. Do you go your way in peace, and let us do the same."
Fulke d'Arnaye put the girl aside and spoke rapidly in French to his companion. Then with mincing agility he stepped tow- ard Master Darke.
Roger blustered. "You grinning fool!" said he, "what do you mean?"
"Chastisement!" said the Frenchman, and struck him in the face. 102
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EX?*
"Very well!" said Master Darke, strange- ly quiet. And with that they both drew.
The Frenchman laughed, high and shrill, $\\ as they closed, and afterward began to pour
forth a voluble flow of discourse. Battle ^y
was wine to the man.
"Not since Agincourt, Master Coward — he", no! — have I held sword in hand. It is a good sword, this, — a sharp sword, is it not ? Ah, the poor arm — but see, your blood is quite red, monsieur, and I had thought cowards yielded a paler blood than brave men possess. We live and learn, do we not ? Observe, I play with you like a child,— as I played with your King at Agincourt when I cut away the coronet from his helmet. I did not kill him — no! — but I wounded him, you conceive? Presently I shall wound you, too, monsieur. My com- pliments— you have grazed my hand. But I shall not kill you, because you are the kinsman of the fairest lady earth may boast, and I would not willingly shed the least drop of any blood that is partly hers. Ohe, no! Yet since I needs must 103
^
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^Oy
do this ungallant thing — why, see, mon- sieur, how easy it is!"
Thereupon he cut Roger down at a blow and composedly set to wiping his sword on the grass. The Englishman lay like a log where he had fallen.
"Lord," Adelais quavered, "lord, have you killed him, then?"
Fulke d'Arnaye sighed. "Helas, no!" said he, "since I knew that you did not wish it. See, mademoiselle, — I but struck him with the flat of my blade, this coward. He will recover in a half-hour."
He stood as in thought for a moment, concluding his meditations with a grimace. After that he began again to speak in French to his companion. The debate seemed vital. The stranger gesticulated, pleaded, swore, implored, summoned all inventions between the starry spheres and the mud of Cocytus to judge of the affair; but Fulke d'Arnaye was resolute.
"Behold, mademoiselle," he said, at length, "how my poor Olivier excites him- self over a little matter. Olivier is my 104
brother, most beautiful lady, but he speaks no English, so that I cannot present him to you. He came to rescue me, this poor Olivier, you conceive. Those Norman fish- ermen of whom you spoke to-day — but you English are blinded, I think, by the fogs of your cold island. Eight of the bravest gentlemen in France, mademoiselle, were those same fishermen, come to bribe my gaoler, — the incorruptible Tompkins, no less. He, yes, they came to tell me that Henry of Monmouth, by the wrath of God King of France, is dead at Vincennes yonder, mademoiselle, and that France will soon be free of you English. France rises in her might now." His nostrils dilated for a moment ; then he shrugged his shoul- ders. "And poor Olivier grieves that I may not strike a blow for her, — grieves that I must go back to Winstead."
D'Arnaye laughed as he caught the bridle of the gray mare and turned her so that Adelais might mount. But the girl drew away from him with a faint, wonder- ing cry.
105
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"You will go back! You have escaped, lord, and you will go back!"
"Why, look you," said the Frenchman, "what else may I conceivably do? We are some ten miles from your home, most beautiful lady, — can you ride those ten long miles alone? in this night so dan- gerous? Can I leave you here? He, sure- ly not. I am desolated, mademoiselle, but I needs must burden you with my com- pany homeward."
Adelais drew a choking breath. He had fretted out seven years of captivity. Now he was free ; and lest her name be smutched, however faintly, he would go back to his prison, jesting. "No, no!" she cried aloud, at the thought.
But he raised a deprecating hand. "You cannot go alone. Olivier here would go with you gladly. Not one of those brave gentlemen who await me at the coast yonder but would go with you very, very gladly, for they love France, these brave gentlemen, and they think that I can serve her better than most other men. 106
IJH
That is very flattering, is it not? But all the world conspires to flatter me, mad- emoiselle. Your good brother, by exam- ple, prizes my company so highly that he would infallibly hang the gentleman who rode back with you. So, you conceive, I cannot avail myself of their services. But with me it is different, hein? Ah, yes, he will merely lock me up again and for the future guard me more vigilantly. Will you not mount, mademoiselle?"
His voice was quiet, and his smile never failed him. It was this steady smile that set her heart to aching. Adelais knew that no natural power could dissuade him ; he would go back with her: but she alone knew how constantly he had hoped for liberty, with what fortitude he had awaited his chance of liberty; and that he should return to captivity, smiling, thrilled her to impotent, heart - shaking rage. It mad- dened her that he dared love her so infinitely.
" But, mademoiselle," Fulke d'Arnaye went on, when she had mounted, "let us 107
proceed, if it please you, by way of Filby. For then we may ride a little distance with this rogue Olivier. I may not hope to see Olivier again in this life, you comprehend, and Olivier is, I think, the one person who loves me in all this great wide world. Me,
I am not very popular, you see. But you do not object, mademoiselle?"
"Go!" she said, in a stifled voice.
Afterward they rode on the way to Filby, leaving Roger Darke to regain the master- ship of his faculties at discretion. The two Frenchmen talked vehemently as they went; and Adelais, following them, brood- ed on the powerful Marquis of Falmouth and the great lady she would shortly be; but her eyes strained after Fulke d'Arnaye.
Presently he fell a-singing; and still his singing praised her in a desirous song, yearn- ing but very sweet, as they rode through the Autumn woods; and his voice quickened her pulses as always it had the power to quicken them, and in her soul the intermi- nable battle dragged on and on. 1 08
"&wtet Aiulata"
Sang Fulke d'Arnaye:
"Had you lived when earth was new What had bards of old to do Save to sing the song of you ?
" They had sung of you always, Adelais, sweet Adelais ; Ne'er had other name had praise, Ne'er had deathless memories Clung as love .may cling to these Sweet, sad names of Heloise, France sea, Thisbe, Bethsabe, Morgaine, Dalida, Semele, Semiramis, Antiope, Iseult, Lucrece, Pisidice, Alcestis and Alcyone; But your name had all men's praise, Sweet Adelais."
[HEN they had crossed the Bure, they had come into the open country, — a great plain, gray in the moon- light, that descended, hil- lock by hillock, toward the shores of the North Sea. On the right the dimpling lustre of tumbling waters stretch- ed to a dubious sky-line, unbroken save for the sail of the French boat, moored near the ruins of the old Roman station, Garianonum, and showing very white against the unrest- ing sea, like a naked arm; and to the left the lights of Filby flashed their unblinking, cordial radiance.
Here the brothers parted. Vainly Olivier wept and stormed before Fulke's unwaver-
IIO
•
"$ttt**t A&tUifi
ing smile ; the Sieur d'Arnaye was adaman- tean ; and presently the younger man kissed him on both cheeks and rode slowly away toward the sea.
D'Arnaye stared after him. "Ah, the brave lad!" he said. "And yet how fool- ish! Look you, mademoiselle, that rogue is worth ten of me, and he does not even suspect it."
His composure stung her to madness.
"Now, by the passion of our Lord and Saviour!" Adelais cried, wringing her hands in impotence; "I conjure you to hear me, Fulke! You must not do this thing. O, you are cruel, cruel! Listen, my lord," she went on with more restraint, when she had reined up her horse by the side of his, "yonder in France the world lies at your feet. Our great King is dead. France rises now, and France needs a brave captain. You, you! it is you that she needs. She has sent for you, my lord, that mother France whom you love. And you will quiet- ly go back to sleep in the sun at Winstead when France has need of you. O, it is foul !" in
I
ute of £0tt*
But he shook his head. '" France is very dear to me," he said, "yet there are other men who can serve France. And there is no man save me who may serve you to- night, most beautiful lady."
"You shame me!" she cried, in a gust of passion. "You shame my worthlessness with this mad honor of yours that drags you jesting to your death ! For you must die a prisoner now, without any hope. You and Orleans and Bourbon are Eng- land's only hold on France, and Bedford dare not let you go. Fetters, chains, dun- geons, death, torture perhaps — that is what you must look for now."
" Helas, you speak more truly than an oracle," he gayly assented; but still his eyes strained after Olivier.
Adelais laid her hand upon his arm. "You love me," she breathed, quickly. "Ah, I am past shame now! God knows, I am not worthy of it, but you love me. Ever since I was a child you have loved me, — always, always it was you who hu- mored me, shielded me, protected me with
112
this great love that I have not merited. Very well," — she paused, for a single heart- beat,— "go! and take me with you."
The hand he raised shook as though palsied. "O most beautiful!" the French- man cried, in an extreme of adoration; " you would do that ! You would do that in pity to save me — unworthy me! And it is I whom you call brave — me, who annoy you with my woes so petty!" Fulke d'Arnaye slipped from his horse, and presently stood beside the gray mare, holding a long, slim hand in both of his. "I thank you," he said, simply. "You know that it is impossible. But yes, I have loved you these seven years. And now — Ah, my heart shakes, my words tumble, I cannot speak! You know that I may not — may not let you do this thing. Even if you loved me— He gave a hopeless gesture. "Why, there is always our brave marquis to be considered, who will so soon make you a powerful lady. And I? — I have nothing."
But Adelais had rested either hand upon
a stalwart shoulder, bending down to him till her hair brushed his. " Do you not understand?" she whispered. "Ah, my paladin, do you think I speak in pity? I wished to be a great lady, — yes. Yet al- ways, I think, I loved you, Fulke, but until to-night I had believed that love was only the man's folly, the woman's diversion. See, here is Falmouth's ring." She drew it from her finger and flung it into the night. "Yes, I hungered for Falmouth's power, but you have shown me that which is above any temporal power. Ever I must crave the highest, Fulke. Ah, fair sweet friend, do not deny me!" Adelais cried, piteously. "Take me with you, Fulke! I will ride with you to the wars, my lord, as your page; I will be your wife, your slave, your scullion. I will do anything save leave you. Lord, it is not the maid's part to plead thus!"
Fulke d'Arnaye drew her warm, yielding body toward him and stood in silence, chok- ing. Then he raised his eyes to heaven. "Dear Lord God," he cried, in a great 114
. -vr ~>
L»&
voice, "I entreat of Thee that if through my fault this woman ever know regret or sorrow I be cast into the nethermost pit of Hell for all eternity!" Afterward he kissed her.
And presently Adelais lifted her head from his shoulder, with a mocking little laugh. "Sorrow!" she echoed. "I think there is no sorrow in all the world. Mount, my lord, mount ! See where brother Olivier waits for us yonder."
JUNE 5, 1455— AUGUST 4, 1462
" Fortune fuz par clercz jadis nommee, Qui toi, Franfois, crie et nomme meurtriere"
i
~fN France there was work abundant for t Fulke d'Arnaye, and he set about it man- -L- fully; for seven dreary years he and Rougemont and Dunois managed, somehow, to bolster up the cause of the fat-witted King of Bourges (as the English then called him], who afterward became King Charles VII. of France. But in the February of 1429 — four days before the Maid of Domremy set forth from her voice-haunted Bois Chenu to bring about a certain coronation in Rheims Church and in Rouen Square a flamy martyrdom — four days to an hour before the coming of the good Lorrainer, Fulke d'Arnaye was slain at Rouvray-en-Beausse in that encounter be- tween the French and the English which his- tory has commemorated as the Battle of the Herrings.
Adelais died the following year, leaving two sons : Noel, born in 1425, and Raymond, 119
in 1426; who were reared by their uncle, Olivier d'Arnaye. It was said of them that Noel was the handsomest man of his times, and Raymond the most shrewd; concerning that you will judge hereafter. Both of them, on reaching manhood, were prominently identified with the Dauphin's party in the unending squabbles between Charles VII. and the future Louis XI.
Now you may learn how Noel d'Arnaye came to be immortalized by a legacy of two hundred and twenty blows from an osier- whip — since (as the testator piously affirms) , " chastoy est une belle aulmosne."
P<~T\H
ffis
HERE went about the Rue Saint Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to Frangois de Montcorbier. "Holy Virgin!" said the Rue Saint Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has she not taken Noel d'Arnaye, — Noel the Hand- some? I grant you Noel is an ass, but, then, he is of the nobility, look you. He has the Dauphin's favor. Noel will be a great man when our exiled Dauphin comes
121
from Geneppe yonder to be King of France. Then, too, she might have had Philippe Sermaise. Sermaise is a priest, of course, and one may not marry a priest, but Ser- maise has money, and Sermaifee is mad for love of her. She might have done worse. But Francois! Ho, death of my life, what is Francois? Perhaps — he, he! — perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us, you say? Perhaps, but I cannot. Francois is inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does she see -in him ? He is a scholar ?— well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet? —rhyming will not fill the pot. Rhymes are a thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is canon at Saint Benoit-le-B&ourne" yonder, but canons are not Midases. The girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you, if— he, he! — if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day. O, beyond doubt, Catherine has played the fool."
Thus far the Rue Saint Jacques.
This was on the day of the F£te-Dieu. It was on this day that Noel d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour and then went to the Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a contented insensibility ; that Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a priest and aforetime a rival of Francois de Montcorbier for her favors; and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing. But afterward he gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking for Francois de Montcorbier.
II
n'atitflttB qu'muj
(tour"
fT verged upon nine in the evening — a late . hour in those days — when Fran- gois climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles's gar- den.
A wall!— and what is a wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the Sieur Pyramus, that ill-starred Babylonish knight, make of a wall? did not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite and more implacable fathers ? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the medi- tations of Master Frangois as he leapt down into the garden.
124
CATHERINE DE VAUCELLES IN HER GARDEN
iinrtar
He had not seen Catherine for three hours, you understand. Three hours ! three eterni- ties rather, and each one of them spent in Malebolge. Coming to a patch of moon- light, Franc, ois paused there and cut an agile caper, as he thought of that approaching time when he might see Catherine every day.
"Madame Francois de Montcorbier, " he said, tasting each syllable with gusto. "Catherine de Montcorbier. Was there ever a sweeter juxtaposition of sounds? It is a name for an angel. And an angel shall bear it, — eh, yes, an angel, no less. O saints in Paradise, envy me! Envy me," he cried, with a heroical gesture toward the stars, "for Francois would change places with none of you."
He crept through ordered rows of chest- nuts and acacias to a window where a dim light burned. Then he unslung a lute from his shoulder and began to sing, secure in the knowledge that deaf old Jehan de Vaucelles was not likely to be disturbed by sound of any nature till that time when it should 125
0
please God that the last trump be noised about the tumbling heavens.
It was good to breathe the mingled odor of roses and mignonette that was thick about him. It was good to sing to her a wailing song of unrequited love and know that she loved him. Frangois dallied with his bliss, parodied his bliss, and — as he complacently reflected — lamented in the moonlight with as tuneful a dolor as Mes- sire Orpheus may have evinced when he carolled in Hades.
Sang Franc, ois:
• ^5
" O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone ! O Grace of her, that hath no grace for
me I
O Love of her, the bit that guides me on To sorrow and to grievous misery! O Beauty of her, my poor heart's en- emy!
0 Pride of her, that slays ! 0 pitiless, great, Sweet Eyes of her! Have done with
cruelty !
Have pity upon me ere it be too late! 126
"Happier for me if elsewhere I had gone
For pity, — ah, far happier for me, Since never of- her may any grace be won, And lest dishonor slay me, I must flee. ' Haro !' I cry, (and cry how uselessly !): 'Haro!' I cry to folk of all estate,
For I must die unless it chance that she
Have pity upon me ere it be too late.
" A time draws on 'neath whose disastrous sun Your beauty's flower must fade and wane
and be No longer beautiful, and thereupon
I may not mock at you, — not I, for we Shall both be old andvigorless; — m'amye, Drink deep of love, drink deep, and do not
„•> '<#&"' Until love's spring run dry. Have pity
on me! Have pity upon me ere it be too late!
"Lord Love, that all love's lordship hast in
fee, Lighten, ah, lighten thy displeasure's
(Ebe Uiur uf Con*
For all true hearts should, of Christ's
charity, Have pity upon me ere it be too late."
Then from above a voice fluted in the twilight — a high, sweet, delicate voice : " You have mistaken the window, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre."
" Ah, cruel!" sighed Francois. " Will you never let that kite hang upon the wall?"
" It is all very well to groan like a bellows. Guillemette Moreau did not sup here for nothing. I know of the verses you made her, — and the gloves you gave her at Can- dlemas, too. Saint Anne!" cried the voice, somewhat sharply; "she needed gloves. Her hands are so much raw beef. And the head-dress at Easter, — she looks like the steeple of Saint Benoit in it. But every man to his taste, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Good - night, Monsieur de Montcorbier." But for all that the window did not close.
"Catherine — !" he pleaded; and under
his breath he expressed uncharitable as-
128
pirations as to the future of Guillemette Moreau.
"You have made me very unhappy," said the voice, with a little sniff.
"It was before I knew you, Catherine. The stars are beautiful, m'amye, and a man may reasonably admire them ; but the stars vanish and are forgotten when the sun appears."
" Ysabeau is not a star," the voice point- ed out; "she is simply a lank, good-for- nothing, slovenly trollop."
"Ah, Catherine—!"
"You are still in love with her."
« /•» j_i • i" "Catherine—!
"Otherwise, you will promise me for the future to avoid her as you would the Black Death."
"Catherine, her brother is my friend. Catherine—!"
" Rene de Montigny is, to the knowledge of the entire Rue Saint Jacques, a gambler and a drunkard and, in all likelihood, a thief. But you prefer the Montigny s to me, it appears. An ill cat seeks an ill rat. Very 129
¥
heartily do I wish you joy of them. You will not promise ? Good-night, then, Mon- sieur de Montcorbier."
"Mother of God! I promise, Catherine."
From above Mademoiselle de Vaucelles gave a luxurious sigh. "Dear Francois!" said she.
"You are a tyrant," he complained. "Madame Penthesilea was not more cruel. Madame Herodias was less implacable, I think. And I think that neither was so beautiful."
"I love you," said Mademoiselle de Vau- celles, promptly.
" But there was never any one so many fathoms deep in love as I. Love bandies me from the postern to the frying-pan, from hot to cold. Ah, Catherine, Catherine, have pity upon my folly ! Bid me fetch you Prester John's beard, and I will do it; bid me believe the sky is made of calf- skin, that morning is evening, that a fat sow is a wind- mill, and I will do it. Only love me a little, dear."
"My king, my king!" she murmured. 130
»'v}
WfieS
"My queen, my tyrant! Ah, what eyes you have! Ah, pitiless, great, sweet eyes, — sapphires that in the old days might have a o
ransomed every monarch in Tamerlane's stable! Even in the night I see them, Catherine."
"Yet Ysabeau's eyes are brown."
"Then are her eyes the gutter's color. But Catherine's eyes are twin firmaments."
And about them the acacias rustled lazily, and the air was sweet with the odors of growing things, and the world, drenched in moonlight, slumbered. Without was Paris, but old Jehan's garden - wall cloistered Paradise.
" Has the world, think you, known lovers, long dead now, that were once as happy as we?"
" Love was not known till we discovered
it.'
" I am so happy, Frangois, that I fear death."
"We have our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring run ^, dry. Catherine, death comes
t£u >k
yonder in the church-yard the poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and have laughed in the sun with some candid lass. We have our day, Catherine."
"I love you!"
"I love you!"
So they prattled in the moonlight. Their discourse was no more overburdened with wisdom than has been the ordinary com- muning of lovers since Adam first awakened ribless. Yet they were content.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
•V^fc
'<.©"
Ill
lit:
OMEWHAT later Francois came down the deserted street, treading on air. It was a bland Summer night, windless, moon - washed, odorous with garden - scents; the moon, nearing its full, was a silver egg set on end — ("Leda-hatched," he termed it ; " one may look for the advent of Queen Heleine ere dawn") ; and the sky he likened to blue velvet studded with the gilt nail-heads of a seraphic upholsterer. Fran- cois was a poet, but a civic poet; then, as always, he pilfered his similes from shop- windows.
But the heart of Frangois was pure mag- nanimity, the heels of Frangois mercury, as
9 133
*•$***
&&. a
L^^x
he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit- le-B6tourne, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk Francois paused.
On a stone-bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as he paddled with the girl's hand. "You tempt me to mur- der," he was saying. "It is a deadly sin, my soul, and I have no mind to fry in Hell while my body swings on the Saint Denis road, a crow's dinner. Let Francois live, my soul! My soul, he would stick little Gilles like a pig." He began to blubber at the thought.
"Holy Macaire!" said Francois; "here is a pretty plot a-brewing." Yet because his heart was filled just now with loving-kind- ness, he forgave the girl. " Tantcsne irce ?" said Francois ; and aloud : " Ysabeau, it is time you were abed."
She wheeled upon him in apprehension; then, with recognition, her eyes flamed. "Now, Gilles!" cried Ysabeau de Montigny; 134
• V* t
-Q&
"now, coward! He is unarmed, Gilles. Look, Gilles! Kill for me this betrayer of women!"
Under his mantle Frangois loosened the short sword he carried. But the priest plainly had no mind to the business. He rose, tipsily fumbling a knife, fear in his eyes, snarling like a cur at sight of a strange mastiff. " Vile rascal !" said Gilles Raguyer, as he strove to lash himself into a rage. " O coward! O parricide! O Tarquin!"
Frangois began to laugh. "Let us have done with this farce," said he. " Your man has no stomach for battle, Ysabeau. And you do me wrong, my lass, to call me a betrayer of women. Doubtless, the tale served well enough to urge Gilles on ; but you and I and God know that naught has passed between us save a few kisses and a trinket or so. It is no knifing matter. Yet for the sake of old time, come home, Ysabeau ; your brother is my friend, and the hour is some- what late for honest women to be abroad."
"Enne?" shrilled Ysabeau; "and yet, if I cannot strike a spark of courage from this
clod here, there come those who may help me, Frangois de Montcorbier. 'Ware Ser- maise, Master Francois!"
Francois wheeled. Down the Rue Saint Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. " Holy Virgin !" thought Frangois ; " this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now."
He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. But Gilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand. "O hideous Tarquin! O Absalom!" growled Gilles; "have you, then, no respect for church- men?"
With an oath, Sermaise ran up. " Now, may God die twice," he panted, "if I have not found the skulker at last! There is a certain crow needs picking between us two, Montcorbier."
Hemmed in by his enemies, Francois temporized. " Why do you accost me thus angrily, Master Philippe?" he babbled. "What harm have I done you? What is 136
I
8
fK0riar
your will of me?" But his fingers tore feverishly at the strap by which the lute was swung over his shoulder, and presently it fell at their feet, leaving him unhampered and his sword-arm free.
This was fuel to the priest's wrath. "Sacred bones of Benoit!" he snarled; "I could make a near guess as to what win- dow you have been caterwauling under." From beneath his gown he suddenly hauled out a rapier and struck at the boy while Francois was yet tugging at his sword.
Full in the mouth he struck him, splitting the lower lip through. Frangois felt the piercing cold of the steel, the tingling of it against his teeth, then the warm grateful spurt of blood; through a red mist, he saw Gilles and Ysabeau run screaming down the Rue Saint Jacques.
He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work. Pres- ently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer-and-tongs, as the saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a mad- man, for Frangois had wounded him in the i37
M£
'<£?-
groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue Saint Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl. Then as Franc. ois hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head — Frenchmen had not yet learn- ed to thrust with the point in the Italian manner — Jehan le Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout.
" Heart of God !" cried Sermaise. " Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But Francois jumped backward, tum- bling over le Merdi, and with apish celerity caught up a great stone and flung it full in the priest's countenance.
The rest was hideous. For a breathing space Sermaise kept his feet, his outspread arms making a tottering cross. It was curious to see him peer about irresolutely now that he had no face. Francois, staring at the black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Immediately the man's wrists fell, and in the silence his rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid 138
<2
:.,«-v
DP
^fy nrtar
down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy. Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the windows overhead as the Rue Saint Jacques, watch-
ing, caught its breath again.
Francois de Montcorbier ran. He tore at his breast as he ran, stifling. He wept like a beaten child as he ran through the moon- washed Rue Saint Jacques, making bestial whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing that flapped against his chin as he ran.
" Francois !" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, Francois!"
It was Rene de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half- tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried him, still sobbing, to Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. In ac- cordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. Ren6 lied up-hill and down- dale, while in a corner of the room Francois monotonously wept.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
IV
3Fatrt
[HE Rue Saint Jacques had .toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured Fran- gois de Montcorbier dan- gling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques and deduced a moral for the edification of the children.
Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's hurt vanity flamed.
"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette, — within an hour after leaving me, he is junk- eting on church-porches with that trollop. 140
^\
J« />
They were not there for holy- water. Mid- night, look you! And he swore to me — chaff, chaff ! His honor is chaff, Guillemette, and his heart a bran-bag. O, swine, filthy swine ! Eh, well, let the swine stick to his sty. Send Noel d'Arnaye to me."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin.
"Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter ? No, this is a bottle, a tun, a wine-barrel! Noel, I despise you. I will marry you if you like."
He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later she told Jehan de Vaucelles she intend- ed to marry Noel the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wis- dom, lifted his brows and returned to his reading.
The patrol had transported Sermaise to the prison of Saint Benoit, where he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hotel Dieu. He died the following Saturday.
Death exalted the man to some nobility. 141
1*5
o:
Before one of the apparitors of the Chatelet he exonerated Montcorbier, under oath, and asked that no steps be taken against him. "I forgive him my death," he said, manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him thereunto." Presently he demanded the glove they would find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest kissed it, and then began to laugh. Shortly afterward he died, still gnawing at the glove.
Franc, ois and Rene had vanished . " Good riddance," said the Rue Saint Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer be- fore the court of the Chatelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in de- fault of his appearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the king- dom.
They were at Saint Pourgain-en-Bour- bonnais, where Rene" had kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, Francois had there secured a place as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had cleared him of all blame, he set about pro- 142
<C"
curing a pardon.* It was January before he succeeded in obtaining it.
Meanwhile he had learned a deal of Rene's way of living. "You are a thief," he said to him, the day his pardon came, " but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, Rene, not Gestas. Heh, I throw no stones. You have stolen, but I have killed. Let us go to Paris, lad, and start afresh."
Montigny grinned. " I shall certainly go to Paris," he said. "My friends wait for me there, — Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan and Colin de Cayeux. We are planning to visit Guillaume Coiffier, a fat priest with some six hundred crowns in the cupboard.
— 1 V*3 "* fWJ> ^y*~f J J
You will make one of the party, Francois." "Rene, Rene," said he, "my heart bleeds
^r ,*£7 i ^^
for you."
Again Montigny grinned. "You think
* There is humor in his deposition that Gilles and Ysabeau and he were loitering before Saint Benpit's in friendly discourse, — " pour soy, esbatre." Perhaps Ren6 prompted this; but in itself, it is characteristic of Montcorbier that he trenched on perjury, blithely, in order to screen Ysabeau.
M3
.
Sin* of
a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "People will be mistaking you for one of the Nine Worthies. Alex- ander! will you, then, stable the elephant you took from Porus in the Rue Saint Jacques? O, my dear Macedonian, let us first see what the Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I think you will make one of our party."
HERE was a light crack- ling frost under foot the day that Frangois came back to the Rue Saint Jacques. A brisk, clear January day. It was good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.
" Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laugh- ed. "Why, lass— !"
"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose in air. " A murderer, a priest-killer."
Then the sun went black for Francois. It was a bucket of cold water, full in the face. He gasped, staring after her; and pursy Thomas Tricot, on his way from mass, nudged Martin Blaru in the ribs.
Jr
"Martin," said he, "fruit must be cheap this year. Yonder in the gutter is an apple from the gallows-tree, and no one will pick it up."
Blaru turned and spat out, "Cain! Judas!"
This was only a sample. Everywhere Francois found rigid faces and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at him as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le-Betourne". In those days a slain priest was God's servant slain, no less.
"My father!" he cried, rapping upon the door of the Hotel de la Porte-Rouge; "O, my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking."
Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window. "Murderer!" said he. "Betrayer of women! Now, by the caldron of John! how dare you show your face here ? I gave you my name and you soiled it. Back to your husks, rascal!"
"O God, O God!" Francois cried, one or two times, as he looked up into the old man's 146
Otf3
implacable countenance. "You, too, my father!" He burst into a fit of sobbing.
"Go!" the priest stormed; "go, mur- derer!"
It was not good to hear Francois's laugh- ter. "What a world we live in!" he gig- gled. "You gave me your name and I soiled it ? Eh, Master Priest, Master Phari- see, beware! Villon is good French for vagabond, an excellent name for an out- cast. And as God lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France."
Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles's home. " I will afford God one more chance at my soul," he said.
In the garden he met Catherine and Noel
•? '' /CO*
d'Arnaye coming out of the house. They stopped short. Her face, half -muffled in her cloak, flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, and Catherine reached out her hands to him with a glad cry.
His heart was hot wax as he fell upon ^, his knees before her. "O heart's dearest,
*S l/.-^-~^3L^
heart's dearest!" he sobbed; "forgive me that I doubted you!"
And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while, "Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre," said she, in a crisp voice, — "having served your purpose, however, I perceive she is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove. Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women."
Noel was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller than Fran- cois. He lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike, cruel.
Francois did not move a muscle. God had chosen.
After a little, though, the Sieur d'Arnaye flung Franc, ois upon the ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose to his feet. He never looked at Noel. For a long time he stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward he went out of the garden, staggering like a drunken man. 148
fcift
He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. "Rene," said he, "there is no charity on earth, there is no God in Heaven. But in Hell there is most assuredly a devil, and I think that he must laugh a great deal. What was that you were telling me about the priest with six hundred crowns in his cupboard?"
Rene slapped him on the shoulder. "Now," said he, "you talk like a man." He opened the door at the back and cried: "Colin, you and Petit Jehan and that pig Tabary may come out. I have the honor, messieurs, to offer you a new Companion of the Cockleshell — Master Francois de Mont- corbier."
But the recruit raised a protesting hand. "No," said he,— " Francois Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it was given me not by one priest but by three."
fc
VI
"TlmUt l'£0tai itora fc'imto luix"
HEN the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crown- ed King of France, there rode with him Noel d'Ar- naye and his brother Ray- mond. The news that Charles the Well-Served was now servitor to Death, brought the exiled Louis post-haste to Paris, where the Rue Saint Jacques turned out full force to witness his triumphal en- try. They expected Saturnian doings of Louis XI. in those days, a recrudescence of the Golden Age; and when the new king began his reign by granting Noel a snug fief in Picardy, the Rue Saint Jacques ap- plauded.
" Noel has followed his fortunes these ten
r tar
years," said the Rue Saint Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see Noel the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan proved wealthier than the quarter suspected. But death of my life, yes! You may see his tomb in the Innocents' yonder, with weep- ing seraphim and a yard of Latin on it. I warrant you that rascal Montcorbier has lain awake in half the prisons in France thinking of what he flung away. Seven years, no less, since he and Montigny show- ed their thieves' faces here. La, the world wags, neighbor, and they say there will be a new tax on salt if we go to war with the English."
Somewhat to this effect, also, 'ran the meditations of Catherine de Vaucelles one still August night as she sat at her window, overlooking the acacias and chestnuts of her garden. Noel, conspicuously prosperous in blue and silver, had but now gone down the Rue Saint Jacques, singing, clinking the fat purse whose plumpness was still a novelty.
•@>
ubr iOtur of
That evening she had given her promise to marry him at Michaelmas.
It was a black night, moonless, windless. There were a scant half-dozen stars over- head, and the thick scent of roses and mign- onette came up to her in hot, stifling waves. Below the tree -tops conferred, stealthily, and the fountain plashed its eternal remon- strance to the conspiracy they lisped of.
After a while Catherine rose and stood contemplative before a long mirror that was in her room. Catherine de Vaucelles was twenty-three now, in the full flower of her beauty. Blue eyes the mirror showed her, — luminous and tranquil eyes, set very far apart; honey-colored hair that hung heavily about her face, a mouth all curves, the hue of a strawberry, tender but rather fretful, and beneath it a firm chin ; only her nose left something to be desiderated, — for that feature, though well-formed, was dimin- utive and bent, by perhaps the thickness of a cobweb, toward the left. She might reasonably have smiled at what the mirror showed her, but, for all that, she sighed. 152
" O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone, said Catherine, wistfully ; then on a sudden she burst into tearless sobbing. " Ah, God in Heaven, forgive me for my folly ! Sweet Christ, intercede for me who have paid so dearly for my folly!"
Fate grinned in her weaving. There stole through the open window the sound of a voice singing below.
Sang the voice:
"0 Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!
O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me ! 0 Love of her, the bit that guides me on To sorrow and to grievous misery I O Beauty of her, my poor heart's enemy — "
and broke off in a fit of coughing.
She remained motionless for a matter of two minutes, her head poised alertly. Then,
A v »>
with a gasp, she sprang to the gong and struck it seven or eight times.
"Macee, there is a man in the garden. Bring him to me, Macee, — ah, love of God, Mac6e, make haste!"
u\a
Blinking, he stood upon the threshold. Then, without words, their lips met.
"My king!" said Catherine; "heart's emperor !"
" O rose of all the world !" he cried.
There was very little need of speech.
But after a moment she drew away and stared at him. Frangois, though he was but thirty, seemed an old man. His bald head shone in the candle-light. His face was a mesh of tiny wrinkles, wax-white, and his lower lip, puckered by the scar of his wound, protruded in an eternal grimace. As Catherine steadfastly regarded him, the faded eyes, half - covered with blue film, shifted, and with a jerk he glanced over his shoulder. The movement started a cough tearing at his throat.
"Holy Macaire!" said he. "I thought Henri Cousin, the executioner, was at my heels. Why do you stare so, lass ? Have you anything to eat ? I am famished , Catherine . ' '
In silence she brought him meat and wine, and he fell upon it wolfishly. He ate with his front teeth, like a sheep. 154
¥ V
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<$^<SK<r^
nrfar
When he had ended, Catherine came to him and took both his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips. " God, God, God!" she sobbed, and her voice was the flat voice of an old woman.
Francois pushed her away. Then he strode to the mirror and regarded it intent- ly. With a snarl, he turned about. " Yes, " said he; "you killed Frangois de Mont- corbier as surely as Montcorbier killed Ser- maise. Eh, Sovereign Virgin ! that is scant cause for grief. You made Franc, ois Villon. What do you think of him, lass?"
She echoed the name. It was in many ways a seasoned name, but one unaccus- tomed to disregard. Accordingly Franc, ois sneered.
"Now, by all the fourteen joys and sorrows of Our Lady! I believe that you have never heard of Francois Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not heard of Francois Villon! Pigs, pigs, that dare not peep out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orleans. The very street- boys know my Ballad of the Women of
if Ik ft v^V^"
'55 j j
Inn? of
Paris. Not a drunkard in the realm but rants my Orison for Master Cotard's Soul when the bottle passes. The King himself hauled me out of Meung gaol last Septem- ber, swearing that in all France there was not my equal at a ballad. And you have never heard of me!" Once more a fit of coughing choked him mid-course in his indignant chatter.
She gave him a woman's answer: "I do not care if you are the greatest lord in the kingdom or the vilest thief that steals ducks from Paris Moat. I love you, Fran- gois."
For a long time he kept silence, blinking, peering quizzically at her lifted face. She loved him ; no questioning that. But pres- ently he put her aside and went toward the open window. This was a matter for con- sideration.
The night was black as a pocket. Staring into it, Francois threw back his head and drew a deep, tremulous breath. The rising odor of roses and mignonette, keen and intolerably sweet, had roused unforgotten 156
THE KING HIMSELF HAULED ME OUT OF MEUNG GAOL'
iflnrtar
pulses in his blood, had set shame and joy a-drum in his breast.
She loved him ! Through all these years, with a woman's unreasoning fidelity she had loved him. He knew well enough how matters stood between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was he whom she loved. She was rich. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingle- side of his own. And he feared to ask.
"Because I love her. Mother of God! has there been in my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that I had craved, — as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling. And I find that she loves me — me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplative- ly he spat out of the window. "Eh, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left
m
I
in my crazy carcass might burn clear! I have but a little while to live; if I dared hope that I might live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the next light woman? — I have answered more difficult riddles. Choose, then, Frangois Villon,— choose between the squalid, foul life yonder and her well-being. It is true that starva- tion is unpleasant and that hanging is re- ported to be even less agreeable. But just now the question is whether it be of greater import that you be saved from the gibbet or she be happy?"
Staring into the darkness he fought the battle out. Squarely he faced the issue; for that instant he saw Frangois Villon as the last seven years had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of Frangois Villon, rotten and weak and honeycombed with vice. Mo- ments of nobility it had; momentarily, as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but he knew that no power existent could hearten it daily to curb the brutish pas- sions. It was no longer possible for Fran- gois Villon to live cleanly. "For what am 158
i^\
«4
I ? — a hog with a voice. And shall I haz- ard her life's happiness to get me a more comfortable sty ?"
He turned with a quick gesture.
"Listen," Francois said. "Yonder is Paris, — laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him ; to thieves' hovels she thrust him down; Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns and lupanars and gut- ters and prisons and its very gallows — Fate dragged him past each in turn that he might make the Song of Paris. He could not have made it here in the smug Rue Saint Jacques. Well! the song is made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, Franc. ois Villon will not be forgot. Villon the singer Fate fashioned to her liking ; Villon the man she has damned body and soul. And by God! the song was worth ^/A it!"
She gave a startled cry and ran to him,
her hands fluttering toward his breast. "Francois!" she breathed.
It was not good to kill the love in her face.
"You loved Frangois de Montcorbier. Frangois de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that day Fran- gois Villon was born. That was the name I swore to drag through every muckheap in France. I have done it, Catherine. The Companions of the Cockleshell — eh, well, the world knows us. We robbed Guillamme Coiffier, we robbed the College of Navarre, we robbed the Church of Saint Maturin, — I abridge the list of our gambols. Now we harvest. Rene de Montigny's bones swing in the wind yonder at Montfaucon. Colin de Cayeux they broke on the wheel. The rest — in effect, I am the only one that jus- tice spared, — because I had a gift of rhym- ing, they said. Pigs! if they only knew! I am immortal, lass. Exegi monumentum. Villon's glory and Villon's shame will never die."
160
vf.
VILLON THE SINGER FATE FASHIONED TO HER LIKING
ilnrtar
He flung back his head and laughed harsh- ly, tittering over that calamitous, shabby se- cret between God and Francois Villon. She had drawn a little away from him. She saw him exultant in infamy, steeped to the hair in infamy. But still the nearness of her, the faint perfume of her, shook in his veins, and still he must play the miserable comedy to the end, since the prize he played for was her happiness.
"A thief — a common thief!" But again her hands fluttered back. "I drove you to it. Mine is the shame."
"Holy Macaire! what is a theft or two? Hunger that causes the wolf to sally from the wood, may well make a man do worse than steal. I could tell you — Ask in Hell of one Thevenin Pensete, who knifed him in the cemetery of Saint John," he hissed at her.
He hinted a lie, for it was Montigny who killed Thevenin Pensete. Villon played without scruple now.
Catherine's face went white. "Stop," she pleaded; "no more, Francois, — ah, Holy Virgin! do not tell me any more." 161
'M.
Kt.
44
n^
*\*
Uotr*
But after a little she came to him, touch- ing him with a curious aversion. " Mine is the shame. It was my jealousy, my vanity, Francois, that thrust you back into temp- tation. And we are told by those in holy orders that the compassion of God is infi- nite. If you still care for me, I will be your wife."
Yet she shuddered.
He saw it. His face, too, was paper.
"He, he, he!" Francois laughed, horribly. "If I still love you! Go, ask of Denise, of Jacqueline, of Pierrette, of Marion the Statue, of Jehanne of Brittany, of Blanche _ Slippermaker, of Fat Peg, — ask of any trollop in all Paris how Francois Villon loves. You thought me faithful! You thought that I preferred you to any painted light o' love! Eh, I perceive that the credo of the Rue Saint Jacques is somewhat narrow-minded. For my part I find one woman much the same as another." And his voice shook, seeing how beautiful she was, seeing how she suffered. But he managed a laugh.
162
, fr^^^&t-^&fcz*^ rx
"I do not believe you," Catherine said, in muffled tones. "Frangois! You loved me, Francois. Ah, boy, boy!" she cried, with a pitiable lift of speech; "come back to me, O boy that I loved!"
It was a difficult business. But he grinned in her face.
"He is dead. Let Francois de Mont- corbier rest in his grave. Your voice is very sweet, Catherine, and — and he could refuse you nothing, could he, lass? Ah, God, God, God!" he cried, in his agony; "why can you not believe me? I tell you Necessity pounds us in her mortar to what shape she will. I tell you that Montcorbier loved you, but Francois Villon prefers Fat Peg. An ill cat seeks an ill rat." And with this a sudden tranquillity fell upon his soul, for he knew that he had won.
Her face told him that. Loathing. He saw it there.
"I am sorry," Catherine said, dully. "I
am sorry. O, for God's sake!" the girl
wailed, on a sudden; "go, go! Do you
want money? I will give you anything if
163
you will only go. O, you beast! O, swine, swine, swine!"
He turned and went, staggering like a drunken man.
Once in the garden he fell prone upon his face in the wet grass. About him the mingled odor of roses and mignonette was sweet and heavy; the fountain plashed in- terminably in the night, and above him the chestnuts and acacias rustled and lisped as they had done seven years ago. Only he was changed.
"O Mother of God," the thief prayed, "grant that Noel may be kind to her! Mother of God, grant that she may be happy! Mother of God, grant that I may not live long!"
\4
K
'.s */ se rencontre icy une avanture merveil- leuse, c'est que le fils de Grand Turc ressemble a Cleonte, a peu de chose pr£s "
71 "TO EL D'ARNAYE and Catherine I 1 / de Vaucelles were married in the Sep- -*- » tember of i 46 ']2, and afterward withdrew to Noel's -fief in Picardy. There Noel built him a new Chateau d'Arnayi, and through the influence of Nicole Beaupertuys, the King's mistress, (who was rumored in court by-ways to have a tenderness for the handsome Noel), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Catherine died in 1470, and Noel survived her three years. They left only one child, a daughter, Matthiette. The estate and title then reverted to Raymond d'Arnaye, Noel's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye is descended.
Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years' space, while Louis XL, that royal fox of France, was de- stroying feudalism piecemeal — trimming its power day by day as you might pare an onion 167
V
,1
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— the new Sieur d 'Arnaye steered his shifty course between France and Burgundy, al- ways to the betterment of his chances in this world however he may have modified them in the next. At Arras he fought beneath the oriftamme ; at Guinegate you could not have found a stauncher Burgundian : though he was no warrior, victory followed him like a lap-dog. So that presently the Sieur d1 Ar- naye and the Vicomte de Puysange — with which family we have previously concerned ourselves — were the great lords of Northern France.
But after the old King's death came gusty times for Sieur Raymond. It is with them we have here to do.
(E0n0piranj of Arttag?
uittlj
^ND so," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, as he laid down 'the letter, "we may look 'for the coming of Mon- ,sieur de Puysange to-mor- Irow."
The Demoiselle Matthiette contorted her features in an expression of disapproval. "So soon!" said she. "I had thought — "
"Ouais, my dear niece, Love rides by ordinary with a dripping spur, and is still as arbitrary as in the day when Mars was taken with a net and amorous Jove bel- 169
lowed in Europa's kail-yard. My faith! if he distemper thus the spectral ichor of the gods, is it remarkable that the warmer blood of man pulses rather vehemently at his bidding? It were the least of his miracles that a lusty bridegroom of some twenty-and-odd outstrip the dial by a scant week. For love — I might tell you such tales—"
Sieur Raymond crossed his white, dim- pled hands over a well-rounded paunch and chuckled reminiscently ; had he spoken doubtless he would have left Master Jehan de Troyes very little to reveal in his Scan- dalous Chronicle : but on a sudden, remem- bering with whom he conversed, his lean face assumed an expression of placid sanc- tity, and the somewhat unholy flame died out of his green eyes. He resembled noth- ing so much as a plethoric cat purring over the follies of kittenhood. You would have taken oath that a cultured taste for good living was the chief of his offences, and that this benevolent gentleman had some sixty well-spent years to his credit. True, his 170
late Majesty, King Louis XI., had sworn Pacque Dieu! that d'Arnaye conspired with his gardener concerning the planting of cabbages, and within a week after his death would head a cabal against Lucifer; but kings are not always infallible, as his Majesty himself had proven at PeYonne.
" — for," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, "man's flesh is frail, and the devil is very cunning to avail himself of the weaknesses of lovers."
"Love!" Matthiette cried. "Ah, do not , mock me, my uncle ! There can be no pre- tence of love between Monsieur de Puysange and me. A man that I have never seen, that is to wed me of pure policy may look for no Alcestis in his wife."
"You speak like a very sensible girl," said Sieur Raymond, complacently. " How- ever, so that he find her no Guinevere or Semiramis or other loose-minded trollop of history, I dare say Monsieur de Puysange || will hold to his bargain with indifferent content. Look you, niece, he buys — the saying is somewhat rustic — a pig in a poke as well as you."
171
Uttt* nf SIntt*
Matthiette glanced quickly toward the mirror which hung in her apartment. It reflected features which went to make up a beauty already be-sonneted in that part of France; and if her green gown was some months behind the last Italian fashion, it undeniably clad one who needed few ad- ventitious aids. The Demoiselle Matthiette at seventeen was very tall and was as yet too slender for perfection of form, but her honey-colored hair hung heavily about the unblemished oval of a countenance whose nose alone left something to be desired ; for this feature, though well formed, was unduly diminutive. For the rest, her mouth curved in an irreproachable bow, her complexion was mingled milk and roses, her blue eyes brooded in a provoking calm; taking mat- ters by and large, the smile that followed her inspection of the mirror's depths was far from unwarranted. Catherine de Vau- celles re-animate, you would have sworn; and at the abbey of Saint Maixent-en-Poitou there was yet a certain monk, one Brother Francois, who would have demonstrated 172
(EnttBpirarg of Arttag?
it to you, in an unanswerable ballad, that Catherine's daughter was in consequence all that an empress should be and so rarely is. Harembourges and Bertha Broad-foot and white Queen Blanche? he would have laughed them to scorn, demolished them, proven them, in comparison, the squalidest sluts extant.
But Sieur Raymond merely chuckled wheezily, as one discovering a fault in his companion of which he disapproves in theory, but in practice finds flattering to his vanity.
" I grant you, he drives a good bargain," said Sieur Raymond. "Were Cleopatra thus featured, the Roman lost the world very worthily. Yet, such is the fantastic disposition of man that I do not doubt he looks forward to the joys of to-morrow with much the same calm self-restraint that you now exercise ; for the lad is young, and, as rumor says, has been guilty of divers verses, — ay, he has bearded common-sense in the vext periods of many a wailing rhyme. I will wager a moderate amount, however, i73
that the Vicomte, like a sensible young man, keeps these whimsies of flames and dames laid away in lavender for festivals and the like ; they are somewhat too fine for every- day wear."
He sipped the sugared wine that stood be- side him. " Like any sensible young man," he repeated, in a meditative fashion that was half a query.
Matthiette stirred uneasily. "Is love, then, nothing?" she murmured.
"Love!" Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked dog. "It is very discreetly fabled that love was born of the mists at Cythera. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on. I may have a passion for fogs, and, doubtless, the morning mists are beautiful; but if I give rein to my ad- miration, breakfast is likely to grow cold. I deduce that mere beauty, as represented by the sunrise, is less worthy of consideration than utility, as personified by the frying- pan. And love! A niece of mine prating of love!" The idea of such an occurrence,
\
fflottfijnrarg of Arttag*
combined with a fit of coughing which now came upon him, drew tears to the Sieur d'Arnaye's eyes. "Pardon me," said he, when he had recovered his breath, "if I speak somewhat brutally to maiden ears."
Matthiette sighed. "Indeed," said she, "you have spoken very brutally!" She rose from her seat, and went suddenly to the Sieur d'Arnaye. "Dear uncle," said she, with her arms about his neck, and her soft cheek brushing his withered countenance, "are you come to my apartments to-night to tell me that love is nothing, — you who have shown me that even the roughest, most grizzled bear in all the world has a heart compact of love and tender as a woman's?"
The Sieur d'Arnaye snorted. " Her mother all over again!" he complained; and then, recovering himself, shook his head with a hint of sadness.
" I have sighed to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is — moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality
may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury that the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this : Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, ly- ing here between the Breton and the Aus- trian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orleans and Dunois are raising every devil in Hell's register! Ah, no, ma mie; I put it to you fairly is it of greater import that a girl have her callow heart's desire than that a province go free of Mon- sieur War and Madame Rapine?" Sieur Raymond struck his hand upon the table with considerable heat. " Everywhere Death yawps at the frontier ; will you, a d'Arnaye, bid him enter and surfeit ? An alliance with Puysange alone may save us. Eheu, it is, doubtless, pitiful that a maid may not wait and wed her chosen paladin, but our vassals demand these sacrifices. For example, do you think I wedded my late wife in any fervor of adoration? I had never seen her 176
fflattHptrarg nf Arttag*
before our marriage day ; yet we lived much as most couples do for some ten years after- ward, thereby demonstrating —
He smiled, evilly; Matthiette sighed.
"So," said he, "remember that Pierre must have his bread and cheese; that the cows must calve undisturbed ; that the pigs —you have not seen the sow I had to-day from Harfleur ? — black as ebony and a snout like a rose-leaf !— must be stied in comfort: and that these things may not be, without an alliance with Puysange. Besides, dear niece, it is something to be the wife of a great lord."
A certain excitement awoke in Mat- thiette's eyes. " It must be very beautiful at court," said she, softly. " Masques, fetes, tourneys every day ; — and they say the new King is exceedingly gallant — "
Roughly Sieur Raymond caught her by the chin, and for a moment turned her face toward his. "I warn you," said he, hoarsely, " you are a d'Arnaye; and King or not —
He paused here. Through the open win- 177
Cttt* of ICott*
dow came the voice of one without, singing to the demure accompaniment of a lute.
"Hey?" said the Sieur d'Arnaye.
Sang the voice:
"When you are very old, and 1 am gone
Out of your life, it may be you will say —
Hearing my name and holding me as one
Long dead to you — in some half-jesting
way Of speech, sweet as vague heraldings of
May Rumored in woods when first the throstles
sing— He loved me once. And straightway mur-
mtiring
My half -for gotten rhymes, you will regret The vanished day when I was wont to sing, Sweetheart, my sweet, we may be happy yet!"
" Now, may I never sit among the saints," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, " if that is not the voice of Raoul de Prison, my new page."
"Hush," Matthiette whispered. "He 178
(Eflttaptrarg nf Arnag?
woos my maid, Alys. He often sings under the window, and I wink at it." Sang the voice:
" I shall not heed you then. My course being
run
For good or ill, I shall have passed away,
And know you, love, no longer, — nor the sun,
Perchance, nor any light of earthly day,
Nor any joy nor sorrow, — while for aye
The world speeds on its course, unreckoning
Our coming or our going. Lips will cling,
Forswear, and be forsaken, and men forget
Our names and places, and our children sing,
Sweetheart, my sweet, we may be
happy yet!
"// in the grave love have dominion
Will that wild cry not quicken the wise
clay,
Vexing with memories of some deed un- done,
Some joy untasted, some lost holiday, All death's large wisdom? Will that "^ wisdom
Sin* nf Sort*
The ghost of any sweet familiar thing Come haggard from the Past, or ever bring
Forgetfulness of those two lovers met Within the Springtide? — nor too wise to
sing,
Sweetheart, my sweet, we may be happy yet!"
" Yea, though the years of vain remember-
ing Draw nigh, and age be drear, yet in the
Spring We meet and kiss. Ah, Lady Mat-
thiette,
Dear love, there is yet time for garnering! Sweetheart, my sweet, we may be happy yet!"
"Dear, dear!" said the Sieur d'Arnaye. "You mentioned your maid's name, I think?"
"Alys," said Matthiette, with unwonted humbleness.
Sieur Raymond spread out his hands in a gesture of commiseration. " This is very 180
(ttuttaptrarg of Arttag?
remarkable," he said. " Beyond doubt, the
gallant beneath has made some unfortunate WyJ!r> y> ' ^rw
error. Captain Gotiard," he called, loudly,
"will you ascertain who it is that warbles in the gardens?"
nf f nutJj
>OTIARD was not long in 'returning; he was followed by two men-at-arms, who held between them the discomfited minstrel. Envy alone could have described the lutanist as ill-favored; his close-fitting garb, wherein the brave reds of Autumn were judiciously mingled, at once set off a well - knit form and enhanced the dark beauty of a countenance less French than Italian in cast. The young man stood silent for a moment, his eyes mutely ques- tioning the Sieur d'Arnaye.
"O, la, la, la!" chirped Sieur Raymond. " Captain, I think you are at liberty to re- tire." He sipped his wine meditatively, 182
,*J;
(Ennajitrarg of
as the men filed out. " Monsieur de Prison, ' ' he resumed, when the arras had fallen, " be- lieve me, I grieve to interrupt your very moving and most excellently phrased ballad in this fashion. But the hour is somewhat late for melody, and the curiosity of old age is privileged. May one inquire, therefore, why you warble my nightingales to rest with this pleasing but — if I may venture a sug- gestion — rather ill-timed madrigal?"
The young man hesitated for an instant before replying. "Sir," said he, at length, " I confess that had I known of your where- abouts, the birds had gone without their lullaby. But you so rarely come to this wing of the chateau, that your presence here to-night is naturally unforeseen. As it is, since chance has betrayed my secret to you, I must make bold to avow it — it is that I love your niece."
" Hey, no doubt you do," Sieur Raymond assented, pleasantly. "Indeed, I think half the young men hereabout are in much the same predicament. But, my question, if I mistake not, related to your reason 183
for chaunting canzonets beneath her win- dow."
Raoul de Prison stared at him in amaze- ment. " I love her," he said.
"You mentioned that before," Sieur Raymond suggested. "And I agreed, as I remember, that it was more than probable ; for my niece here — though it be I that speak it — is by no means uncomely, has a com- mendable voice, the walk of a Hebe, and sufficient wit to deceive her lover into hap- piness. My faith, young man, you show excellent taste! But, I submit, the purest affection is an insufficient excuse for out- baying a whole kennel of hounds beneath the adored one's casement."
"Sir," said Raoul, "I believe that lovers have rarely been remarkable for sanity ; and it has been an immemorial custom among them to praise the object of their desires with fitting rhymes. Conceive, sir, that in your youth, had you been accorded the love of so fair a lady, you yourself had scarcely done otherwise. For I doubt if your blood runs so thin as yet that you have 184
^
fc^.
(EottHptrarij of Arttage
quite forgot young Raymond d'Arnaye and the gracious ladies that he loved, — I think that your heart must needs yet treasure the memories of divers moonlit nights, even such as this, when there was a great silence in the world, and the nested trees were astir with desire of the dawn, and your waking dreams were vext with the singular favor of some woman's face. It is in the name of that young Raymond I now appeal to you."
"H'm!" said the Sieur d'Arnaye. "As I understand it, you appeal on the ground that you were coerced by the trees and led astray by the nightingales; and you desire me to punish your accomplices rather than you."
"Sir,—" saidRaoul.
Sieur Raymond snarled. "You young dog, you know that in the most prosaic breast a minor poet survives his entomb- ment,— and you endeavor to make capital
e>xs
0.4.
of the knowledge. You know that I have
a most sincere affection for your father,
and have even contracted a liking for you,
185
r as
— which emboldens you, my friend, to keep me out of a comfortable bed at this hour of the night with an idiotic discourse of moonlight and nightingales ! As it hap- pens, I am not a lank wench in her first country - dance. Remember that, Raoul de Prison, and praise the good God who gave me at birth a very placable disposition ! There is not a seigneur in all France, save me, but would hang you at the crack of that same dawn for which your lackadaisical trees are whining outside; but the quarrel will soon be Monsieur de Puysange's, and I prefer that he settle it at his own discretion. I content myself with advising you to pester my niece no more."
Raoul spoke boldly. "She loves me," said he, standing very erect.
Sieur Raymond glanced at Matthiette, who sat with downcast head. " H'm!" said he. "She moderates her transports indif- ferently well. Though, again, why not? You are not an ill-looking lad. Indeed, Monsieur de Prison, I am quite ready to admit that my niece is breaking her heart 186
(Eflttsptrarg of
for you. The point on which I wish to dwell is that she weds Monsieur de Puysange early to-morrow morning."
"Uncle," Matthiette cried, as she started to her feet, " such a marriage is a crime! I love Raoul!"
"Undoubtedly," purred Sieur Raymond, — ' ' unboundedly, madly, distractedly ! Now we come to the root of the matter." He sank back in his chair and smiled. " Young people," said he, "be seated, and hearken to the words of wisdom. Love is a divine insanity, in which the sufferer fancies the world mad. And the world is made up of these madmen, who condemn and punish one another."
"But," Matthiette dissented, "ours is no ordinary case!"
"Surely not," Sieur Raymond readily agreed; "for there was never an ordinary case in all the history of the universe. I, too, have known this madness ; I, too, have perceived how infinitely my own skirmishes with the blind bow-god differed in every respect from all that has been or will ever 187
be. It is an infallible sign of this frenzy. Surely, I have said, the world will not will- ingly forget the vision of Chloris in her wedding - garments, or the wonder of her last clinging kiss. Or, say Phyllis comes to-morrow: will an uninventive sun dare to rise in the old, hackneyed fashion on such a day of days ? Perish the thought ! There will probably be six suns, and, I dare say, a meteor or two."
"I perceive, sir," Raoul said here, "that after all you have not forgot the young Raymond whom I spoke of."
"That was a long while ago," snapped Sieur Raymond. " I know a deal more of the world nowadays; and a level-headed world would be somewhat surprised at such occurrences, and suggest that Phyllis re- main at home for the future. For whether you — or I — or any one — be in love or no is to our fellow creatures an affair of aston- ishingly trivial import. Not since Noe's, that great admiral's, has there been a love- business worthy of consideration; nor, if you come to that, not since sagacious Solo- 188
mon went a - wenching has a wise man wasted his wisdom on a lover. So love one another, my children, by all means : but do you, Matthiette, make a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange ; and do you, Raoul de Prison, remain at Arnaye, and attend to my falcons more carefully than you have done of late, — or, by the cross of Saint Lo! I will clap the wench in a con- vent and hang the lad as high as Haman!" He smiled pleasantly, and drained his wine- cup as one considering the discussion ended.
Raoul sat silent for a moment. Then he rose to his feet. "Monsieur d'Arnaye," said he, " you know me to be a gentleman of unblemished descent, and as such entitled to a hearing. I forbid you before all-seeing Heaven to wed your niece to a man she does not love ! And I have the honor to request of you her hand in marriage."
"Which offer I decline," said Sieur Ray- mond, grinning placidly, — " with every imaginable civility. Niece," he continued, " here is a gentleman who offers you a heart- ful of love, six months of insanity, and forty 189
B
MIS
*p*
years of boredom in a leaky, wind-swept chateau. He has dreamed dreams concern- ing you: allow me to present to you the reality." He grasped Matthiette's hand and led her mirror-ward. " Permit me to present the wife of Monsieur de Puysange. Could he have made a worthier choice ? Ah, happy lord, that shall so soon embrace such perfect loveliness ! Thrice happy lady, that shall so soon taste every joy the age affords I Frankly, my niece, is not that golden hair of a shade that would set off a coronet extraordinarily well ? Are those wondrous eyes not fashioned to surfeit themselves upon the homage and respect accorded the wife of a great lord? Ouais, the thing is indisputable: and, therefore, I must differ from Monsieur de Prison here, who would condemn this perfection to bloom and bud unnoticed in a paltry country town."
There was an interval, during which Matthiette gazed sadly into the mirror. "And Arnaye — ?" said she.
"Undoubtedly," said Sieur Raymond, — " Arnaye must perish unless Puysange prove 190
TM
her friend. Therefore, my niece conquers her natural aversion to a young and wealthy husband, and a life of comfort and flattery and gayety; relinquishes you, Raoul; and, like a feminine Mettius Curtius, sacrifices herself to her country's welfare. Pierre may sleep undisturbed; and the pigs will have a new sty. My faith, it is quite af- fecting!
"And so," he continued, "you young fools may bid adieu, once for all, while I contemplate this tapestry." He strolled to the end of the room and turned his back. "Admirable!" said he; "really now, that leopard is astonishingly lifelike!"
Raoul came toward her. "Dear love," said he, "you have chosen wisely, and I bow to your decision. Farewell, Matthiette,— O indomitable heart! O brave, perfect woman that I have loved ! Now at the last of all, I praise you for your charity to me, Love's mendicant, — ah, believe me, Matthi- ette, that atones for aught which follows now. Come what may, I shall always re- member that once in old days you loved me, 191
2I0tt*
and, remembering that, thank God with a contented heart." He bowed over her un- responsive hand. "Matthiette," he whis- pered, "be happy! For I desire that very heartily, and I beseech of our Sovereign Lady — though I confess without shame that there are tears even now in my eyes — that you may never know unhappiness. You have chosen wisely, Matthiette ; but ah, my dear, do not forget me utterly, — keep a little place in your heart for your boy lover!"
Sieur Raymond concluded his inspection of the tapestry, and turned with a premonitory cough. "Thus ends the comedy," said he, shrugging, "and the world triumphs. In- variably the world triumphs, my children. Eheu, we are as God made us, we men and women that cumber His stately earth!" He drew his arm through Raoul's. " Fare- well, niece," said he, smiling; " I rejoice that you are cured of your malady. Now in re- spect to gerfalcons — " said he.
The arras fell behind them.
r-
m
Ill (§h&itrat*
ATTHIETTE sat brooding in her room, as the night wore on. She was pitifully frightened, numb in her misery. There was a heavy silence in the room, she dimly noted, that her sobs had no power to shatter. Dimly, too, she seemed aware of a multitude of wide, incurious eyes that watched her from every corner, where pan- els snapped at times with sharp echoes. The night was wellnigh done when she arose.
"After all," she said, wearily, "it is my manifest duty." Matthiette crept to the mirror and studied it.
"Madame de Puysange," said she, with-
%*\m
out any intonation; then threw her arms above her head, with a hard gesture of de- spair. " I love him!" she cried, in a fright- ened voice.
Matthiette went hurriedly to a great chest and fumbled among its contents. Present- ly she drew out a dagger in a leather case, and unsheathed it. The light shone evilly scintillant upon the blade. She laughed, and hid it in the bosom of her gown, and fastened a cloak about her with impatient fingers. Then Matthiette crept down the winding stair that led to the gardens, and unlocked the door at the foot of it.
A sudden rush of night swept toward her, big with the secrecy of dawn. The sky, washed clean of stars, sprawled above, — a leaden, monotonous blank. Many trees whispered thickly over the chaos of earth; to the left a field of growing maize bristled in the uncertain dove-colored twilight like the chin of an unshaven Titan. Matthiette rustled into the silence.
She entered an expectant world. Once in the tree-chequered gardens, it was as 194
OUttjsjnrarg of Arttag*
though she crept through the aisles of an un- lit cathedral already garnished for its sacred pageant. Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above ; the margin of night was thick with their petulant complaints; behind her was the monstrous shadow of the Chateau d'Arnaye, and past that a sullen red, the red of bruised flesh, that hinted dawn. Infinity waited a-tiptoe, tense for the com- ing miracle, and against this vast repression, her grief dwindled into irrelevancy: the leaves whispered comfort; each tree-bole hid chuckling fauns. Matthiette laughed. Content had flooded the universe all through and through now that yonder, unseen as yet, the red-faced sun was toiling up the rim of the world.
Matthiette came to a hut, from whose open window a faded golden glow spread out into obscurity like a tawdry fan. From without she peered into the hut and saw Raoul. A lamp flickered upon the table. His shadow twitched and wavered about the plastered walls, — a portentous mass of head upon a hemisphere of shoulders, —
Tr>-
J95
I / &/**-** ^ w. **. .-. «i ^r»>« _^«W»W- .* fS« •*.. «. ^ ^m \£**
She lOinr uf
as he bent over a chest, sorting the contents, singing softly to himself, while Matthiette leaned upon the sill without, and the gar- dens of Arnaye took form and stirred in the heart of a chill, steady, sapphire - like radiance. Sang Raoul:
"Lord, I have worshipped thee ever, —
Through all of these years I have served thee, forsaking never
Light Love that veers
As a boy between laughter and tears. Hast thou no more to afford, —
Naught save laughter and tears, — Love, my lord ?
"/ have borne thy heaviest burden,
Nor served thee amiss: Now thou hast given a guerdon; Lo, it is this — A sigh, a shudder, a kiss. Hast thou no more to accord ?
I would have more than this, Love, my lord.
196
"7 am wearied of love that is pastime
And gifts that it brings; I pray thee, O lord, at this last time
Ineffable things.
Ah, have the long-dead kings Stricken no subtler chord,
Whereof the memory clings, Love, my lord ?
"But for a little we live;
Show me thine innermost hoard! Hast thou no more to give, Love, my lord ?"
IV
ATTHIETTE crept to the door of the hut; her hands fell irresolutely upon the rough surface of it and lay still for a moment. Then with a hoarse groan the door swung inward, and the light guttered in a swirl of keen morning air, casting convul- sive shadows upon her lifted countenance, and was extinguished. She held out her arms in a gesture that was half maternal. "Raoul!" she murmured.
He turned toward her. A sudden bird plunged through the twilight without with a glad cry that pierced like a knife through the stillness that had fallen in the little room. Raoul de Prison faced her with 198
(EattBjiirartr of Arttag*
clinched hands, silent. For that instant she saw him transfigured.
But his silence frightened her. There came a piteous catch in her voice. " Fair friend, have you not bidden me — be happy?"
Then for a moment his hands wavered toward her. Presently, "Mademoiselle," he said, dully, " I may not avail myself of your tenderness of heart ; that you have come to comfort me in my sorrow is a deed at which, I think, God's holy Angels must rejoice: but I cannot avail myself thereof."
"Raoul, Raoul," she said, "do you think that I have come in — pity!"
"Matthiette," he returned, "your uncle spoke the truth. I have dreamed dreams concerning you, — dreams of a foolish, gold- en-hearted girl, who would yield — yield gladly — all that the world may give, to be one flesh and soul with me. But I have wakened, dear, to the braver reality, — that valorous woman, strong enough to conquer even her own heart that her people may be freed from their peril. I must worship you now, for I dare no longer love." 199
"Blind! blind!" she cried.
Raoul smiled down upon her. "Mad- emoiselle," said he, "I do not doubt that you love me."
She went wearily toward the window. " I am not very wise," Matthiette said, in a tuneless voice, looking out upon the gar- dens, "and it appears that God has given me an exceedingly tangled matter to un- ravel. Yet if I decide it wrongly I think that the Eternal Father will understand it is because I am not very wise."
Matthiette was silent for a moment. Then with averted face she spoke again. "My uncle bids me with many astute saws and pithy sayings to wed Monsieur de Puysange. I have not skill to combat him. Many times he has proven it my duty, but he is quick in argument and proves what he will ; and I do not think it is my duty. It ap- pears to me a matter wherein man's wisdom is at variance with God's will as manifested to us through the holy Evangelists. Assur- edly, if I do not wed Monsieur de Puysange there may be war here in our Arnaye, and
200
of Arttag?
God has forbidden war; but I may not in- sure peace in Arnaye without prostituting my body to a man I do not love and that, too, God has forbidden. I speak somewhat grossly for a maid, but you love me, I think, and will understand. And I, also, love you, Monsieur de Prison. Yet — ah, I am pitiably weak! Love tugs at my heart-strings, bid- ding me cling to you, and forget these other matters; but I cannot that, either. For I desire very heartily the comfort and splen- dor and adulation which you cannot give me. I am pitiably weak, Raoul! I cannot come to you with an undivided heart, — but my heart, such as it is, I have given you, and to-day I deliver my honor into your hands to preserve or trample under foot, as you elect. Mother of Christ, grant that I have chosen rightly, for I have chosen now, past retreat! I have come to you, Raoul; and I will never leave you until you bid me do so."
Matthiette turned from the window. Now, her bright audacity gone, her ardors chilled, you saw how like a grave, straight-
201
%Cc?.j£2!UL&^:n '.:*.«*«
Sou*
forward boy she was, how inimitably tender, how inefficient. "It may be that I have decided wrongly in this tangled matter," she said, very quiet. " And yet I think that God, Who loves us infinitely, cannot be greatly vexed at anything His children do for love of one another."
He came toward her. " I bid you go," he said. "Matthiette, it is my duty to bid you go, and it is your duty to obey."
She smiled wistfully through unshed tears. "Man's wisdom!" said Matthiette. "I think that it is not my duty. And so I disobey, — this once, and no more here- after."
"And yet last night — " Raoul began.
" Last night," said she, " I thought that I was strong. I know now it was my vanity that was strong, — vanity and pride and fear, Raoul, that for a little mastered me. But in the dawn all things seem very trivial, saving love alone."
They looked out into the dew-washed gardens. The day was growing strong, and already clear-cut forms were passing be-
202
I/T* '
neath the swaying branches. In the dis- tance a trumpet snarled.
"Dear love," said Raoul, "do you not understand that you have brought about my death? For Monsieur de Puysange is at the gates of Arnaye; and he or Sieur Raymond will hang me ere noon."
" I do not know," she said, in a tired voice. " I think that Monsieur de Puysange has some cause to thank me; and my uncle loves me, and his heart, for all his gruff ness, is very tender. And — see, Raoul!" She drew the dagger from her bosom. " I shall not survive youlong, O man of all the world !"
Perplexed joy flushed through his coun- tenance. "You will do this — for me?" he cried, with a sort of sob. "Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!"
"But I love you," said Matthiette. " How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?"
He bent over her drawrn face, that turned quickly from his lips.
"Not here," she said, — "before all men, if they try to take you from me." 203
ft
Hand in hand they went forth into the daylight. The kindly, familiar place seem- ed in Matthiette's eyes oppressed and trans- formed by the austerity of dawn. It was a clear Sunday morning, at the hightide of Summer, and she found the world unutter- ably Sabbatical ; only by a vigorous effort could memory connect it with the normal life of yesterday. The cool recesses of the woods, vibrant now with multitudinous shrill pipings, the purple shadows shrinking eastward on the dimpling lawns, the intricate and broken traceries of the dial (where they had met so often) , the blurred windings of their path, above which brooded the peaked- roofs and gables and slender clerestories of Arnaye, the broad river yonder lapsing through deserted sunlit fields, — these things lay before them scarce heeded, stript of all perspective, flat as an open scroll. To them all this was alien. She and Raoul were quite apart from these matters, quite alone, despite the men of Arnaye, hurrying toward the court-yard, who stared at them curi- ously, and muttered in their beards. A 204
brisk wind was abroad in the tree -tops, scattering apple - blossoms over the lush grass. Tenderly Raoul brushed a clinging petal from the gold of Matthiette 's hair.
" Before all men?" Raoul said.
"Before God Himself," said Matthiette. " Before God Himself, my husband."
They came into the crowded court-yard as the drawbridge fell. A troop of horse clattered into Arnaye, and the leader, a young man of frank countenance, dismount- ed and looked inquiringly about him. Then he came toward them.
"Monseigneur," said he, "you see that we ride early in honor of your nuptials."
Some one chuckled wheezily behind them. "Love one another, young people," said Sieur Raymond; "but do you, Matthiette, make a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange."
She stared into Raoul's laughing face; there was a kind of anguish in her swift comprehension. Quickly the two men who loved her glanced at one another, half in shame.
205
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But the Sieur d'Arnaye was not lightly dashed. "O, la, la, la!" chuckled the Sieur d'Arnaye, "she would never have given you a second thought, Monsieur le Vicomte, had I not labelled you forbidden fruit. As it is, my last conspiracy, while a little ruth- less, I grant you, turns out admirably. Jack has his Jill, and all ends merrily, like an old song. I will begin on those pig -sties the first thing to-morrow morning."
Yl OCTOBER 6, 1519
" Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flour- isheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world; first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promiseth his faith unto "
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quondam Raoulde Prison stood high in the graces of the Lady Regent of Prance, Anne de Beaujeu, who was, indeed, tolerably notorious for her partiality to handsome men. You will find some cu- rious evidence on this point in the case of Jacques de Beaune, afterward baron of Sem- blancay, as detailed by Monsieur Honore de Balzac. I dare affirm, however, that Raoul came to preferment through quite another en- trance; in any event when in 1485 the daugh- ter of Louis XI. fitted out an expedition to press the Earl of Richmond's claim to the English crown, de Puysange sailed from Havre as commander of the French -fleet. He fought at Bosworth, not discreditably, and a year afterward, when England had for the most part accepted Henry VII., Matthiette rejoined him.
They never subsequently quitted England. 209
C(.
During the long internecine wars when the island was convulsed by the pretensions of Per kin War beck, de Puysange was known as a brave captain and a judicious counsellor to the King, who rewarded his services as liber- ally as Tudorian parsimony would permit. After the death of Henry VII., however, the Vicomte took little part in public affairs, spending most of his time at Tiverton Manor, in Devon, where, surrounded by their nu- merous progeny, he and Matthiette grew old to- gether in — let us hope — peace and concord. I think, though, that she never quite forgave him for not being de Prison.
The following is from a manuscript of doubtful authenticity still to be seen at Allonby Shaw. It purports to contain the autobiog- raphy of Master Will Sommers, afterward court-fool to Henry VIII., and touches in many points upon the history of the family of Puysange. It is from the earlier part of these memoirs that I have selected the ensuing episode.
irl
v 'j^. A
)ND so, dearie," she ended, "you may seize the rev- enues of Allonby with un- washed hands."
I said: "Why have you .done this?" I was half- frightened by the sudden whirl of Dame Fortune's wheel.
"Dear cousin in motley," grinned the beldame, " 'twas for hatred of Tom Allonby and all his accursed race that I have kept ,, the secret thus long. Now comes a braver revenge : and I wreak my vengeance on the
211
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whole spawn of Allonby — euh, how entirely ! — by setting you at their head . Will you j est for them in counsel, Willie? — reward your henchmen with a merry quip ? — lead 'em to battle with a bawdy song? — ugh! ugh!" Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that would have been f anged curses had breath not failed her : for my aunt Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the attendance of divers Sabbats, and the chaunting of such songs as honest men may not hear and live, however highly succubi and lepri- chaunes commend them.
I squinted down at one green leg, scratch- ed the crimson fellow to it with my bauble, and could not deny that her argument was just.
'Twas a strange tale she had ended, speak- ing swiftly lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done : and the proofs of the tale's verity, set forth in a fair clerkly handwriting, rustled in my hand, — scratches of a long-rotted pen that transferred me to the right side of the blank-
212
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//aBi
, 1
"'TWAS A STRANGE TALE SHE HAD ENDED"
et, and transformed the motley of a fool into the ermine of a peer.
All Devon knew that I was son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Fal- mouth at his uncle's death, had he not first broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy Church had smiled upon his union with a tanner's daughter, and that their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true, — true that I had precedence even of Monsieur de Puysange, friend of the King's though he was, who had kept me on a shifty diet, first coins, then curses, these ten years past, — true that my father, rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he died, — true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their secret with the priest that married them, maliciously preserving till this, when her words fell before me anciently Jove's shower before the Argi Danae, coruscant and aweful, pregnant with
14 213
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as
ve
undreamed-of chances that stirred as yet blindly in Time's womb.
A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ignoble years she had suf- fered me to bear ; yet my callow gentility bade me deal tenderly with this dying peas- ant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used by our house. Death hath a strange potency : commanding as he doth, unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence as an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow his gaunt standard into unknown realms, his majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of his chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that Cain's children wept about his death-bed, and that the centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the elder-tree: and in like manner the maledictions that stirred in
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my brain had no power to move my lips. The frail carnal tenement, swept and cleansed of all mortality, was garnished for Death's coming; I must, perforce, shout "Huzzay!" at his grim pageant, nor could I sorrow at his advent ; and it was not mine to question the nobility of the prey which Age and Poverty, his unleashed hounds, now harried at the door of the tomb.
"I forgive you," said I.
"Dear marquis," said she, her sunken jaws quivering angrily, " one might think I had kept from you the mastership of this wattled hut, rather than the wardage of Allonby Shaw. Dearie, Monsieur de Puy- sange — ugh! ugh! — Monsieur de Puysange did not take the news so calmly."
"You have told him?"
I sprang to my feet. The cold malice of her face was rather that of Bellona, who, as clerks avow, ever bore carnage and dis- sension in her train, than that of a mortal, mutton-fed woman. Elinor Sommers hated me — having God knows how just a cause — for the reason that I was my father's son; 215
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and yet, for that same reason as I think, there was in all our intercourse an odd, harsh, grudging sort of tenderness.
Now the hag laughed, — flat and shrill, like the laughter of the damned heard in Hell between the roaring of the flames. "Were it not common kindness," she asked, "since his daughter is troth-plight to the usurper? He hath known since morning."
"And Adeliza?" I asked, in a voice that tricked me.
" Heh, my Lady-High-and-Mighty knows nothing as yet. She will learn of it soon enough, though, for Monsieur Fine- Words her father, that silky, grinning thief, is very keen in a money-chase, — keen as a terrier on a rat-track, may Satan twist his neck! Pshutt, dearie! he means to take the estate of Allonby as it stands; what live-stock may go therewith, whether crack-brained or not, is all one to him. He will not balk at a drachm or two of wit in his son-in-law. You have but to whistle, — but to whistle, Willie, and she'll come!"
I said: "Woman, have you no heart?" 216
" I gave it to your father for a few lying speeches," she answered, " and Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamem- non, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. " I gave it— Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. " Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby! Go, cast out your kinsman, and play the fool with all that Tom Allonby held dear, — go, make his name a byword that begot an idiot to play at quoits with coronets! I have nurtured you for this, and you will not fail me; you are not all simpleton, but you will serve my purpose. Go, my lord marquis ; it is not fitting that death should intrude into your lordship's presence. Go, fool, and let me die in peace!"
I no longer cast a cautious eye toward the whip (ah, familiar unkindly whip!) that still hung beside the door of the hut ; but, I confess, my aunt's looks were none too delectable, and ancient custom rendered 217
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her wrath yet terrible. If the farmers thereabouts were to be trusted, I knew Old Legion's bailiff would shortly be at hand, come for a certain overdue soul, escheat and forfeited to Dis by many years of cruel witchcrafts, close wiles, and nameless sor- ceries; and I could never abide unpared nails, even though they be red-hot. There- fore, I relinquished her to the village gossips, who waited without, and tucked my bauble under my arm.
"Dear cousin," said I, "farewell!" "Good-bye, Willie!" said she; "I shall often laugh in Hell to think of the crack- brained marquis that I made on earth. Play the fool yet, dearie."
'Tis my vocation," I answered, briefly: and so went forth into the night.
At tlj* Hair's
CAME to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of Baalze- bub's oldest cloak. The moon was not yet risen, and the clouds hung heavy as