"Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie
Si belle qu'on put souhaiter.
N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider,
Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre.
Bien est Amour puissant et maistre."
THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S LOVE UNWITTINGLY,
AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM;
SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET
UNMAPPED.
_The Story of the Scabbard_
In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second
monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence,
and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby,
who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes
Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in
the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was
presently crowned King of England in Richard's place. All persons,
saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King
Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as
a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body
of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel
at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at
thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully
untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.
Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and
to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But
at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger
from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who
notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's
business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as
great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants
afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary
brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for
the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he
rode to Sycharth.
There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long
stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless
machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the
barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their
squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester,
Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt.
"By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to
declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours."
Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of
Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in
these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil
for once in a way to serve God."
"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned.
"You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved
son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which
we need not speak of,--I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause
sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires
and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a
boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our
Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would."
Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your
practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I
merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have
a fief at Caer Idion, I think?--Very well! I intend to herd your sheep
there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is
your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and
defenceless at Caer Idion."
The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would
cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's
death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty
trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging
scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated
afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not
recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!"
"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do
not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin
to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing
very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who
may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you
take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of
us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can
ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything
save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the
discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking
disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is,
depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally
endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my
performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would
appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive
that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself
about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least,
impossible."
"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found
the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son,
my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than
the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard,
powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword,
sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we
are as gods."
"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms."
"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the
second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at
all."
"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil."
"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your
irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike.
No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly
rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic
squint which came into your family from Poictesme."
"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing.
So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf,
while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three
weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd),
his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly
perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon;
as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of
Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn
persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no
questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain
Glyndwyr."
Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near
the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute.
He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its
long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and
with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that
were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless
and contented hours.
Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would
sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse
to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind
veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who
adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales
from the _Red Book of Hergest_,--telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur,
and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently
discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence.
This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold
demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of
suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady
of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a
white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin
which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored
like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only
it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In
full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but
the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after
sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely
hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in
recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as
though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which
she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else.
Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap
Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and
piggish eyes, and who sang divinely.
One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon,"
he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and
have at you."
"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet
in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing
to me."
With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these
unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated,
but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed
somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived
this he never ascertained.
"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten
minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I
never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with
me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a
conclusion over good sack and claret."
"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen."
"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?"
Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any
one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of
my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save
commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long
as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is
only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my
opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them
has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no
burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth
have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for
example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and,
indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of
other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I
ashamed of my sex."
Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps
it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason."
"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went
to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the
claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to
each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy
to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover,
the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the
windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.
"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not
come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered.
Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked
beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.
Sang Gwyllem:
"Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,--
My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,
O Branwen!
"I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service, dear, because of this;
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That, loving him, you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!
"Of this I know not surely, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live,
And that, when I am dead, with naught to give
Of song or service, Love will yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,
With dreams of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,
O Branwen!"
"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought,
midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep
and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep
in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with
a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?"
For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so
earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by
forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport
with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the
boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was
superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool
than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded."
The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared
himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly
recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over
into England.
Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my
anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now,
by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England."
He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of
grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would
kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and
even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of
vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any
particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to
demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually
of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable;
granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient
machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and
envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as
Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not
now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be
daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I
shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought.
"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all
beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy
vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be
married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be
remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a
trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable
consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself."
Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter
send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the
hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at
the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and
through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier,
while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had
ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot,
had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly
caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist
Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away
with Branwen.
Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did
not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem's house, and broke
in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting
silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn
away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn
by turn, but she was silent.
"On guard!" Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward
his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped
upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard's
girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly
toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and
hairy throat. What followed was brutal.
For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very
dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem's impotent fists as they beat against
the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting
vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard's tunic and
tore it many times. Richard did not utter any articulate word, and
Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the
thudding fall of something ponderous and limp.
"Come!" Richard said then. Through the hut's twilight he came, as
glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old
Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in
his arms lest Branwen's skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which
sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not speak. In
his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. The horse trod with
deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the
darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these
things incuriously.
Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had
been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and
had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had
been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as
yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing.
It was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his
bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen,
who was so near his heart....
Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket.
It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft
cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and
mushrooms. "Behold a feast!" said Richard. He noted then that she
carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of
oak-bark. She thanked him for last night's performance, and drank a
mouthful of wine to his health.
"Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding," said
Richard as he ate.
Branwen answered, "I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is
ended." And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the
happier.
But he only shrugged. "I am the wisest person unhanged, since I
comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, too, the
minstrel of old time that sang: 'Over wild lands and tumbling seas
flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of
all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean
or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine
alone is the power to make playthings of us all.'"
"Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that
Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord," she demanded shyly, "how would
you sing of love?"
Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the lute,
in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory.
"In courtesy, thus--"
Sang Richard:
"The gods in honor of fair Branwen's worth
Bore gifts to her:--and Jove, Olympus' lord,
Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord,
And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth,
And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth
A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword,
And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard
And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;--
"And while the careful gods were pondering
Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was,
Young Cupid came among them carolling
And proffered unto her a looking-glass,
Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing
That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass."
"Three sounds are rarely heard," said Branwen; "and these are the song
of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a
speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of
courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity."
Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade
abashed. Presently he sang again.
Sang Richard:
"Catullus might have made of words that seek
With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,
The perfect song, or in remoter days
Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek;
But I am not as they,--and dare not speak
Of you unworthily, and dare not praise
Perfection with imperfect roundelays,
And desecrate the prize I dare to seek.
"I do not woo you, then, by fashioning
Vext analogues 'twixt you and Guenevere,
Nor do I come with agile lips that bring
The sugared periods of a sonneteer,
And bring no more--but just with, lips that cling
To yours, in murmuring, 'I love you, dear!'"
Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed!
then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was
very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him
to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was
superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact,
he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning
came the knowledge that what Branwen believed was the truth.
Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. Branwen
stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and
heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to
him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at
full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of
pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and Richard
sighed, and shrugged.
"There is a task set me," he said--"it is God's work, I think. But I
do not know--I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen," he
said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness.
And he said also: "Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me!
I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder
is God's work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of
devils. Child! child!" he cried, "I am, and ever was, a coward, too
timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was
afraid to concede that anything is serious!"
For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of
the afternoon.
"I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy
singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even
entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or,
it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the
parting make her sorrowful--or not, at least, too unalterably
sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me.
"Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now,
battered and selfish and too indolent to love her--say, as Gwyllem
loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I
killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man
loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross
nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion,
it is true, but only a half of me loves her. The other half of me
remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc's hut is leaky, that, in
fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I
am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man,
precisely as Owain said." This settled, Richard whistled to his dog.
The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his
sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were
more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had
settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and
bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was
as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was
very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he
trudged away from this star.
Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for Henry
of Lancaster.
It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard idly
talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode
down the river's bank from the ford above. Their leader paused, then
gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered forward.
"God give you joy, fair sir," said Richard, when the cavalier was near
him.
The new-comer raised his visor. "God give you eternal joy, my fair
cousin," he said, "and very soon. Now send away this woman before that
happens which must happen."
"Do you plan," said Richard, "to disfigure the stage of our quiet
pastorals with murder?"
"I design my own preservation," King Henry answered, "for while you
live my rule is insecure."
"I am sorry," Richard said, "that in part my blood is yours."
Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods
arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: "You should read history
more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done,
by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks,
played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are
one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These
persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will
conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you
himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his
son."
The King began, "In mercy, sire--!" and Richard laughed a little,
saying:
"That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander's blood, as we
both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now,
their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your
death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any
hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are
worm's-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of
England."
Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things
saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe
hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close.
"Branwen--!" he said. His eyes devoured her.
"Yes, King," she answered. "O King of England! O fool that I have been
to think you less!"
In a while Richard said: "Well, I at least am not fool enough to think
of making you a king's whore. So I must choose between a peasant wench
and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more
than King of England!"
Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and
neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but
in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment.
Why, between this woman's love and aught else there was no choice for
him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always,
he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before
long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations:
meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. No, he could not go
back to the throne and to the little French girl who was in law his
wife.
And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged voice
of Henry of Lancaster. "It is of common report in these islands that I
have a better right to the throne than you. As much was told our
grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had
you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his
son the Prince of Wales that nothing could alter his purpose. And
indeed if you had followed even the example of the Black Prince you
might still have been our King; but you have always acted so
contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be
generally believed throughout England that you were not, after all,
his son--"
Richard had turned impatiently. "For the love of Heaven, truncate your
abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across that river is the
throne of England, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider
a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, praise God! the sword has
found its sheath."
The King answered: "I do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal,
assuredly--Richard," he cried, a little shaken, "I perceive that until
your death you will win contempt and love from every person."
"Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the world," said
Richard; "but to-day I wash my hands, and set about another and more
laudable business. I had dreamed certain dreams, indeed--but what had
I to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? No,
Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer against you now, and you two must fight
it out. I am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my
cousin--Henry," he said with quickening voice, "there was a time when
we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us,
and I regret that time!"
"As God lives, I too regret that time!" the bluff, squinting King
replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein each understood.
"Dear fool," Sire Henry said, "there is no man in all the world but
hates me saving only you." Then the proud King clapped spurs to his
proud horse and rode away.
More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he and
Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of
that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet.
So Richard laughed. "Praise God!" he wildly cried, "I am the greatest
fool unhanged!"
She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of
God's creatures."
And Richard meditated. "Faith of a gentleman!" he declared; "but you
are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I happen to be quite
certain." Their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of
these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter.