Produced by Suzanne Shell, Anuradha Valsa Raj, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
Domnei
A Comedy of Woman-Worship
By
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
1920
"_En cor gentil domnei per mort no passa_."
TO
SARAH READ McADAMS
IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
"The complication of opinions and ideas, of affections and habits,
which prompted the chevalier to devote himself to the service of a
lady, and by which he strove to prove to her his love, and to merit
hers in return, was expressed, in the language of the Troubadours, by a
single word, by the word _domnei_, a derivation of _domna_, which may
be regarded as an alteration of the Latin _domina_, lady, mistress."
--C. C. FAURIEL,
_History of Provencal Poetry_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
A PREFACE
CRITICAL COMMENT
THE ARGUMENT
PART ONE--PERION
I HOW PERION WAS UNMASKED
II HOW THE VICOMTE WAS VERY GAY
III HOW MELICENT WOOED
IV HOW THE BISHOP AIDED PERION
V HOW MELICENT WEDDED
PART TWO--MELICENT
VI HOW MELICENT SOUGHT OVERSEA
VII HOW PERION WAS FREED
VIII HOW DEMETRIOS WAS AMUSED
IX HOW TIME SPED IN HEATHENRY
X HOW DEMETRIOS WOOED
PART THREE--DEMETRIOS
XI HOW TIME SPED WITH PERION
XII HOW DEMETRIOS WAS TAKEN
XIII HOW THEY PRAISED MELICENT
XIV HOW PERION BRAVED THEODORET.
XV HOW PERION FOUGHT
XVI HOW DEMETRIOS MEDITATED.
XVII HOW A MINSTREL CAME
XVIII HOW THEY CRIED QUITS
XIX HOW FLAMBERGE WAS LOST
XX HOW PERION GOT AID
PART FOUR--AHASUERUS
XXI HOW DEMETRIOS HELD HIS CHATTEL
XXII HOW MISERY HELD NACUMERA.
XXIII HOW DEMETRIOS CRIED FAREWELL
XXIV HOW ORESTES RULED
XXV HOW WOMEN TALKED TOGETHER
XXVI HOW MEN ORDERED MATTERS
XXVII HOW AHASUERUS WAS CANDID
XXVIII HOW PERION SAW MELICENT
XXIX HOW A BARGAIN WAS CRIED
XXX HOW MELICENT CONQUERED
THE AFTERWORD
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Preface
By
Joseph Hergesheimer
It would be absorbing to discover the present feminine attitude toward
the profoundest compliment ever paid women by the heart and mind of men
in league--the worshipping devotion conceived by Plato and elevated to
a living faith in mediaeval France. Through that renaissance of a
sublimated passion _domnei_ was regarded as a throne of alabaster by
the chosen figures of its service: Melicent, at Bellegarde, waiting for
her marriage with King Theodoret, held close an image of Perion made of
substance that time was powerless to destroy; and which, in a life of
singular violence, where blood hung scarlet before men's eyes like a
tapestry, burned in a silver flame untroubled by the fate of her body.
It was, to her, a magic that kept her inviolable, perpetually, in spite
of marauding fingers, a rose in the blanched perfection of its early
flowering.
The clearest possible case for that religion was that it transmuted the
individual subject of its adoration into the deathless splendor of a
Madonna unique and yet divisible in a mirage of earthly loveliness. It
was heaven come to Aquitaine, to the Courts of Love, in shapes of vivid
fragrant beauty, with delectable hair lying gold on white samite worked
in borders of blue petals. It chose not abstractions for its faith, but
the most desirable of all actual--yes, worldly--incentives: the sister,
it might be, of Count Emmerick of Poictesme. And, approaching beatitude
not so much through a symbol of agony as by the fragile grace of a
woman, raising Melicent to the stars, it fused, more completely than in
any other aspiration, the spirit and the flesh.
However, in its contact, its lovers' delight, it was no more than a
slow clasping and unclasping of the hands; the spirit and flesh,
merged, became spiritual; the height of stars was not a figment....
Here, since the conception of _domnei_ has so utterly vanished, the
break between the ages impassable, the sympathy born of understanding
is interrupted. Hardly a woman, to-day, would value a sigh the passion
which turned a man steadfastly away that he might be with her forever
beyond the parched forest of death. Now such emotion is held strictly
to the gains, the accountability, of life's immediate span; women have
left their cloudy magnificence for a footing on earth; but--at least in
warm graceful youth--their dreams are still of a Perion de la Forêt.
These, clear-eyed, they disavow; yet their secret desire, the most
Elysian of all hopes, to burn at once with the body and the soul, mocks
what they find.
That vision, dominating Mr. Cabell's pages, the record of his revealed
idealism, brings specially to _Domnei_ a beauty finely escaping the
dusty confusion of any present. It is a book laid in a purity, a
serenity, of space above the vapors, the bigotry and engendered spite,
of dogma and creed. True to yesterday, it will be faithful of
to-morrow; for, in the evolution of humanity, not necessarily the turn
of a wheel upward, certain qualities have remained at the center,
undisturbed. And, of these, none is more fixed than an abstract love.
Different in men than in women, it is, for the former, an instinct, a
need, to serve rather than be served: their desire is for a shining
image superior, at best, to both lust and maternity. This
consciousness, grown so dim that it is scarcely perceptible, yet still
alive, is not extinguished with youth, but lingers hopeless of
satisfaction through the incongruous years of middle age. There is
never a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternally
searches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle of
his embrace--the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the only
immortality conceivable in terms of ecstasy.
A truth, now, in very low esteem! With the solidification of society,
of property, the bond of family has been tremendously exalted, the mere
fact of parenthood declared the last sanctity. Together with this,
naturally, the persistent errantry of men, so vulgarly misunderstood,
has become only a reprehensible paradox. The entire shelf of James
Branch Cabell's books, dedicated to an unquenchable masculine idealism,
has, as well, a paradoxical place in an age of material sentimentality.
Compared with the novels of the moment, _Domnei_ is an isolated, a
heroic fragment of a vastly deeper and higher structure. And, of its
many aspects, it is not impossible that the highest, rising over even
its heavenly vision, is the rare, the simple, fortitude of its
statement.
Whatever dissent the philosophy of Perion and Melicent may breed, no
one can fail to admire the steady courage with which it is upheld.
Aside from its special preoccupation, such independence in the face of
ponderable threat, such accepted isolation, has a rare stability in a
world treacherous with mental quicksands and evasions. This is a valor
not drawn from insensibility, but from the sharpest possible
recognition of all the evil and Cyclopean forces in existence, and a
deliberate engagement of them on their own ground. Nothing more, in
that direction, can be asked of Mr. Cabell, of anyone. While about the
story itself, the soul of Melicent, the form and incidental writing, it
is no longer necessary to speak.
The pages have the rich sparkle of a past like stained glass called to
life: the Confraternity of St. Médard presenting their masque of
Hercules; the claret colored walls adorned with gold cinquefoils of
Demetrios' court; his pavilion with porticoes of Andalusian copper;
Theodoret's capital, Megaris, ruddy with bonfires; the free port of
Narenta with its sails spread for the land of pagans; the
lichen-incrusted glade in the Forest of Columbiers; gardens with the
walks sprinkled with crocus and vermilion and powdered mica ... all are
at once real and bright with unreality, rayed with the splendor of an
antiquity built from webs and films of imagined wonder. The past is, at
its moment, the present, and that lost is valueless. Distilled by time,
only an imperishable romantic conception remains; a vision, where it is
significant, animated by the feelings, the men and women, which only,
at heart, are changeless.
They, the surcharged figures of _Domnei_, move vividly through their
stone galleries and closes, in procession, and--a far more difficult
accomplishment--alone. The lute of the Bishop of Montors, playing as he
rides in scarlet, sounds its Provençal refrain; the old man Theodoret,
a king, sits shabbily between a prie-dieu and the tarnished hangings of
his bed; Mélusine, with the pale frosty hair of a child, spins the
melancholy of departed passion; Ahasuerus the Jew buys Melicent for a
hundred and two minae and enters her room past midnight for his act of
abnegation. And at the end, looking, perhaps, for a mortal woman,
Perion finds, in a flesh not unscarred by years, the rose beyond
destruction, the high silver flame of immortal happiness.
So much, then, everything in the inner questioning of beings condemned
to a glimpse of remote perfection, as though the sky had opened on a
city of pure bliss, transpires in _Domnei_; while the fact that it is
laid in Poictesme sharpens the thrust of its illusion. It is by that
much the easier of entry; it borders--rather than on the clamor of
mills--on the reaches men explore, leaving' weariness and dejection for
fancy--a geography for lonely sensibilities betrayed by chance into the
blind traps, the issueless barrens, of existence.
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER.
CRITICAL COMMENT
_And Norman_ Nicolas _at hearté meant
(Pardie!) some subtle occupation
In making of his Tale of Melicent,
That stubbornly desiréd Perion.
What perils for to rollen up and down,
So long process, so many a sly cautel,
For to obtain a silly damosel!_
--THOMAS UPCLIFFE.
Nicolas de Caen, one of the most eminent of the early French writers of
romance, was born at Caen in Normandy early in the 15th century, and
was living in 1470. Little is known of his life, apart from the fact
that a portion of his youth was spent in England, where he was
connected in some minor capacity with the household of the Queen
Dowager, Joan of Navarre. In later life, from the fact that two of his
works are dedicated to Isabella of Portugal, third wife to Philip the
Good, Duke of Burgundy, it is conjectured that Nicolas was attached to
the court of that prince . . . . Nicolas de Caen was not greatly
esteemed nor highly praised by his contemporaries, or by writers of the
century following, but latterly has received the recognition due to his
unusual qualities of invention and conduct of narrative, together with
his considerable knowledge of men and manners, and occasional
remarkable modernity of thought. His books, therefore, apart from the
interest attached to them as specimens of early French romance, and in
spite of the difficulties and crudities of the unformed language in
which they are written, are still readable, and are rich in instructive
detail concerning the age that gave them birth . . . . Many romances
are attributed to Nicolas de Caen. Modern criticism has selected four
only as undoubtedly his. These are--(1) _Les Aventures d'Adhelmar de
Nointel_, a metrical romance, plainly of youthful composition,
containing some seven thousand verses; (2) _Le Roy Amaury_, well known
to English students in Watson's spirited translation; (3) _Le Roman de
Lusignan_, a re-handling of the Melusina myth, most of which is wholly
lost; (4) _Le Dizain des Reines_, a collection of quasi-historical
_novellino_ interspersed with lyrics. Six other romances are known to
have been written by Nicolas, but these have perished; and he is
credited with the authorship of _Le Cocu Rouge_, included by Hinsauf,
and of several Ovidian translations or imitations still unpublished.
The Satires formerly attributed to him Bülg has shown to be spurious
compositions of 17th century origin.
--E. Noel Codman,
_Handbook of Literary Pioneers._
Nicolas de Caen est un représentant agréable, naïf, et expressif de cet
âge que nous aimons à nous représenter de loin comme l'âge d'or du bon
vieux temps ... Nicolas croyait à son Roy et à sa Dame, il croyait
surtout à son Dieu. Nicolas sentait que le monde était semé à chaque
pas d'obscurités et d'embûches, et que l'inconnu était partout; partout
aussi était le protecteur invisible et le soutien; à chaque souffle qui
frémissait, Nicolas croyait le sentir comme derrière le rideau. Le ciel
par-dessus ce Nicolas de Caen était ouvert, peuplé en chaque point de
figures vivantes, de patrons attentifs et manifestes, d'une invocation
directe. Le plus intrépide guerrier alors marchait dans un mélange
habituel de crainte et de confiance, comme un tout petit enfant. A
cette vue, les esprits les plus émancipés d'aujourd'hui ne sauraient
s'empêcher de crier, en tempérant leur sourire par le respect: _Sancta
simplicitas!_
--Paul Verville,
_Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen._
THE ARGUMENT
_"Of how, through Woman-Worship, knaves compound
With honoure; Kings reck not of their domaine;
Proud Pontiffs sigh; & War-men world-renownd,
Toe win one Woman, all things else disdaine:
Since Melicent doth in herselfe contayne
All this world's Riches that may farre be found.
"If Saphyres ye desire, her eies are plaine;
If Rubies, loe, hir lips be Rubyes sound;
If Pearles, hir teeth be Pearles, both pure & round;
If Yvorie, her forehead Yvory weene;
If Gold, her locks with finest Gold abound;
If Silver, her faire hands have Silver's sheen.
"Yet that which fayrest is, but Few beholde,
Her Soul adornd with vertues manifold."_
--SIR WILLIAM ALLONBY.
THE ROMANCE OF LUSIGNAN OF
THAT FORGOTTEN MAKER IN THE
FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE NICOLAS
DE CAEN. HERE BEGINS THE TALE
WHICH THEY OF POICTESME NARRATE
CONCERNING DAME MELICENT,
THAT WAS DAUGHTER TO
THE GREAT COUNT MANUEL.
PART ONE
PERION
_How Perion, that stalwart was and gay,
Treadeth with sorrow on a holiday,
Since Melicent anon must wed a king:
How in his heart he hath vain love-longing,
For which he putteth life in forfeiture,
And would no longer in such wise endure;
For writhing Perion in Venus' fire
So burneth that he dieth for desire._
1.
_How Perion Was Unmasked_
Perion afterward remembered the two weeks spent at Bellegarde as in
recovery from illness a person might remember some long fever dream
which was all of an intolerable elvish brightness and of incessant
laughter everywhere. They made a deal of him in Count Emmerick's
pleasant home: day by day the outlaw was thrust into relations of mirth
with noblemen, proud ladies, and even with a king; and was all the
while half lightheaded through his singular knowledge as to how
precariously the self-styled Vicomte de Puysange now balanced himself,
as it were, upon a gilded stepping-stone from infamy to oblivion.
Now that King Theodoret had withdrawn his sinister presence, young
Perion spent some seven hours of every day alone, to all intent, with
Dame Melicent. There might be merry people within a stone's throw,
about this recreation or another, but these two seemed to watch
aloofly, as royal persons do the antics of their hired comedians,
without any condescension into open interest. They were together; and
the jostle of earthly happenings might hope, at most, to afford them
matter for incurious comment.
They sat, as Perion thought, for the last time together, part of an
audience before which the Confraternity of St. Médard was enacting a
masque of _The Birth of Hercules_. The Bishop of Montors had returned
to Bellegarde that evening with his brother, Count Gui, and the
pleasure-loving prelate had brought these mirth-makers in his train.
Clad in scarlet, he rode before them playing upon a lute--unclerical
conduct which shocked his preciser brother and surprised nobody.
In such circumstances Perion began to speak with an odd purpose,
because his reason was bedrugged by the beauty and purity of Melicent,
and perhaps a little by the slow and clutching music to whose progress
the chorus of Theban virgins was dancing. When he had made an end of
harsh whispering, Melicent sat for a while in scrupulous appraisement
of the rushes. The music was so sweet it seemed to Perion he must go
mad unless she spoke within the moment.
Then Melicent said:
"You tell me you are not the Vicomte de Puysange. You tell me you are,
instead, the late King Helmas' servitor, suspected of his murder. You
are the fellow that stole the royal jewels--the outlaw for whom half
Christendom is searching--"
Thus Melicent began to speak at last; and still he could not intercept
those huge and tender eyes whose purple made the thought of heaven
comprehensible.
The man replied:
"I am that widely hounded Perion of the Forest. The true vicomte is the
wounded rascal over whose delirium we marvelled only last Tuesday. Yes,
at the door of your home I attacked him, fought him--hah, but fairly,
madame!--and stole his brilliant garments and with them his papers.
Then in my desperate necessity I dared to masquerade. For I know enough
about dancing to estimate that to dance upon air must necessarily prove
to everybody a disgusting performance, but pre-eminently unpleasing to
the main actor. Two weeks of safety till the _Tranchemer_ sailed I
therefore valued at a perhaps preposterous rate. To-night, as I have
said, the ship lies at anchor off Manneville."
Melicent said an odd thing, asking, "Oh, can it be you are a less
despicable person than you are striving to appear!"
"Rather, I am a more unmitigated fool than even I suspected, since when
affairs were in a promising train I have elected to blurt out, of all
things, the naked and distasteful truth. Proclaim it now; and see the
late Vicomte de Puysange lugged out of this hall and after appropriate
torture hanged within the month." And with that Perion laughed.
Thereafter he was silent. As the masque went, Amphitryon had newly
returned from warfare, and was singing under Alcmena's window in the
terms of an aubade, a waking-song. "_Rei glorios, verais lums e
clardatz--" Amphitryon had begun. Dame Melicent heard him through.
And after many ages, as it seemed to Perion, the soft and brilliant and
exquisite mouth was pricked to motion.
"You have affronted, by an incredible imposture and beyond the reach of
mercy, every listener in this hall. You have injured me most deeply of
all persons here. Yet it is to me alone that you confess."
Perion leaned forward. You are to understand that, through the
incurrent necessities of every circumstance, each of them spoke in
whispers, even now. It was curious to note the candid mirth on either
side. Mercury was making his adieux to Alcmena's waiting-woman in the
middle of a jig.
"But you," sneered Perion, "are merciful in all things. Rogue that I
am, I dare to build on this notorious fact. I am snared in a hard
golden trap, I cannot get a guide to Manneville, I cannot even procure
a horse from Count Emmerick's stables without arousing fatal
suspicions; and I must be at Manneville by dawn or else be hanged.
Therefore I dare stake all upon one throw; and you must either save or
hang me with unwashed hands. As surely as God reigns, my future rests
with you. And as I am perfectly aware, you could not live comfortably
with a gnat's death upon your conscience. Eh, am I not a seasoned
rascal?"
"Do not remind me now that you are vile," said Melicent. "Ah, no, not
now!"
"Lackey, impostor, and thief!" he sternly answered. "There you have the
catalogue of all my rightful titles. And besides, it pleases me, for a
reason I cannot entirely fathom, to be unpardonably candid and to fling
my destiny into your lap. To-night, as I have said, the _Tranchemer_
lies off Manneville; keep counsel, get me a horse if you will, and
to-morrow I am embarked for desperate service under the harried Kaiser
of the Greeks, and for throat-cuttings from which I am not likely ever
to return. Speak, and I hang before the month is up."
Dame Melicent looked at him now, and within the moment Perion was
repaid, and bountifully, for every folly and misdeed of his entire
life.
"What harm have I ever done you, Messire de la Forêt, that you should
shame me in this fashion? Until to-night I was not unhappy in the
belief I was loved by you. I may say that now without paltering, since
you are not the man I thought some day to love. You are but the rind of
him. And you would force me to cheat justice, to become a hunted
thief's accomplice, or else to murder you!"
"It comes to that, madame."
"Then I must help you preserve your life by any sorry stratagems you
may devise. I shall not hinder you. I will procure you a guide to
Manneville. I will even forgive you all save one offence, since
doubtless heaven made you the foul thing you are." The girl was in a
hot and splendid rage. "For you love me. Women know. You love me. You!"
"Undoubtedly, madame."
"Look into my face! and say what horrid writ of infamy you fancied was
apparent there, that my nails may destroy it."
"I am all base," he answered, "and yet not so profoundly base as you
suppose. Nay, believe me, I had never hoped to win even such scornful
kindness as you might accord your lapdog. I have but dared to peep at
heaven while I might, and only as lost Dives peeped. Ignoble as I am, I
never dreamed to squire an angel down toward the mire and filth which
is henceforward my inevitable kennel."
"The masque is done," said Melicent, "and yet you talk, and talk, and
talk, and mimic truth so cunningly--Well, I will send some trusty
person to you. And now, for God's sake!--nay, for the fiend's love who
is your patron!--let me not ever see you again, Messire de la Forêt."
2.
_How the Vicomte Was Very Gay_
There was dancing afterward and a sumptuous supper. The Vicomte de
Puysange was generally accounted that evening the most excellent of
company. He mingled affably with the revellers and found a prosperous
answer for every jest they broke upon the projected marriage of Dame
Melicent and King Theodoret; and meanwhile hugged the reflection that
half the realm was hunting Perion de la Forêt in the more customary
haunts of rascality. The springs of Perion's turbulent mirth were that
to-morrow every person in the room would discover how impudently every
person had been tricked, and that Melicent deliberated even now, and
could not but admire, the hunted outlaw's insolence, however much she
loathed its perpetrator; and over this thought in particular Perion
laughed like a madman.
"You are very gay to-night, Messire de Puysange," said the Bishop of
Montors.
This remarkable young man, it is necessary to repeat, had reached
Bellegarde that evening, coming from Brunbelois. It was he (as you have
heard) who had arranged the match with Theodoret. The bishop himself
loved his cousin Melicent; but, now that he was in holy orders and
possession of her had become impossible, he had cannily resolved to
utilise her beauty, as he did everything else, toward his own
preferment.
"Oh, sir," replied Perion, "you who are so fine a poet must surely know
that _gay_ rhymes with _to-day_ as patly as _sorrow_ goes with
_to-morrow_."
"Yet your gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath:
and _breath_ also"--the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's--"has a
hackneyed rhyme."
"Indeed, it is the grim rhyme that rounds off and silences all our
rhyming," Perion assented. "I must laugh, then, without rhyme or
reason."
Still the young prelate talked rather oddly. "But," said he, "you have
an excellent reason, now that you sup so near to heaven." And his
glance at Melicent did not lack pith.
"No, no, I have quite another reason," Perion answered; "it is that
to-morrow I breakfast in hell."
"Well, they tell me the landlord of that place is used to cater to each
according to his merits," the bishop, shrugging, returned.
And Perion thought how true this was when, at the evening's end, he was
alone in his own room. His life was tolerably secure. He trusted
Ahasuerus the Jew to see to it that, about dawn, one of the ship's
boats would touch at Fomor Beach near Manneville, according to their
old agreement. Aboard the _Tranchemer_ the Free Companions awaited
their captain; and the savage land they were bound for was a thought
beyond the reach of a kingdom's lamentable curiosity concerning the
whereabouts of King Helmas' treasure. The worthless life of Perion was
safe.
For worthless, and far less than worthless, life seemed to Perion as he
thought of Melicent and waited for her messenger. He thought of her
beauty and purity and illimitable loving-kindness toward every person
in the world save only Perion of the Forest. He thought of how clean
she was in every thought and deed; of that, above all, he thought, and
he knew that he would never see her any more.
"Oh, but past any doubting," said Perion, "the devil caters to each
according to his merits."
3.
_How Melicent Wooed_
Then Perion knew that vain regret had turned his brain, very certainly,
for it seemed the door had opened and Dame Melicent herself had come,
warily, into the panelled gloomy room. It seemed that Melicent paused
in the convulsive brilliancy of the firelight, and stayed thus with
vaguely troubled eyes like those of a child newly wakened from sleep.
And it seemed a long while before she told Perion very quietly that she
had confessed all to Ayrart de Montors, and had, by reason of de
Montors' love for her, so goaded and allured the outcome of their
talk--"ignobly," as she said,--that a clean-handed gentleman would come
at three o'clock for Perion de la Forêt, and guide a thief toward
unmerited impunity. All this she spoke quite levelly, as one reads
aloud from a book; and then, with a signal change of voice, Melicent
said: "Yes, that is true enough. Yet why, in reality, do you think I
have in my own person come to tell you of it?"
"Madame, I may not guess. Hah, indeed, indeed," Perion cried, because
he knew the truth and was unspeakably afraid, "I dare not guess!"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea----" she began, but her
sweet voice trailed and died into silence. He heard the crepitations of
the fire, and even the hurried beatings of his own heart, as against a
terrible and lovely hush of all created life. "Then take me with you."
Perion had never any recollection of what he answered. Indeed, he
uttered no communicative words, but only foolish babblements.
"Oh, I do not understand," said Melicent. "It is as though some spell
were laid upon me. Look you, I have been cleanly reared, I have never
wronged any person that I know of, and throughout my quiet, sheltered
life I have loved truth and honour most of all. My judgment grants you
to be what you are confessedly. And there is that in me more masterful
and surer than my judgment, that which seems omniscient and lightly
puts aside your confessings as unimportant."
"Lackey, impostor, and thief!" young Perion answered. "There you have
the catalogue of all my rightful titles fairly earned."
"And even if I believed you, I think I would not care! Is that not
strange? For then I should despise you. And even then, I think, I would
fling my honour at your feet, as I do now, and but in part with
loathing, I would still entreat you to make of me your wife, your
servant, anything that pleased you . . . . Oh, I had thought that when
love came it would be sweet!"
Strangely quiet, in every sense, he answered:
"It is very sweet. I have known no happier moment in my life. For you
stand within arm's reach, mine to touch, mine to possess and do with as
I elect. And I dare not lift a finger. I am as a man that has lain for
a long while in a dungeon vainly hungering for the glad light of
day--who, being freed at last, must hide his eyes from the dear
sunlight he dare not look upon as yet. Ho, I am past speech unworthy of
your notice! and I pray you now speak harshly with me, madame, for when
your pure eyes regard me kindly, and your bright and delicate lips have
come thus near to mine, I am so greatly tempted and so happy that I
fear lest heaven grow jealous!"
"Be not too much afraid--" she murmured.
"Nay, should I then be bold? and within the moment wake Count Emmerick
to say to him, very boldly, 'Beau sire, the thief half Christendom is
hunting has the honour to request your sister's hand in marriage'?"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea. Take me with you."
"Indeed the feat would be worthy of me. For you are a lady tenderly
nurtured and used to every luxury the age affords. There comes to woo
you presently an excellent and potent monarch, not all unworthy of your
love, who will presently share with you many happy and honourable
years. Yonder is a lawless naked wilderness where I and my fellow
desperadoes hope to cheat offended justice and to preserve
thrice-forfeited lives in savagery. You bid me aid you to go into this
country, never to return! Madame, if I obeyed you, Satan would protest
against pollution of his ageless fires by any soul so filthy."
"You talk of little things, whereas I think of great things. Love is
not sustained by palatable food alone, and is not served only by those
persons who go about the world in satin."
"Then take the shameful truth. It is undeniable I swore I loved you,
and with appropriate gestures, too. But, dompnedex, madame! I am past
master in these specious ecstasies, for somehow I have rarely seen the
woman who had not some charm or other to catch my heart with. I confess
now that you alone have never quickened it. My only purpose was through
hyperbole to wheedle you out of a horse, and meanwhile to have my
recreation, you handsome jade!--and that is all you ever meant to me. I
swear to you that is all, all, all!" sobbed Perion, for it appeared
that he must die. "I have amused myself with you, I have abominably
tricked you--"
Melicent only waited with untroubled eyes which seemed to plumb his
heart and to appraise all which Perion had ever thought or longed for
since the day that Perion was born; and she was as beautiful, it seemed
to him, as the untroubled, gracious angels are, and more compassionate.
"Yes," Perion said, "I am trying to lie to you. And even at lying I
fail."
She said, with a wonderful smile:
"Assuredly there were never any other persons so mad as we. For I must
do the wooing, as though you were the maid, and all the while you
rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no
better than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I
believe none of your accusers. Perion de la Forêt," said Melicent, and
ballad-makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her
voice, "I know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than an
archangel has pilfered drying linen from a hedgerow. I do not guess,
for my hour is upon me, and inevitably I know! and there is nothing
dares to come between us now."
"Nay,--ho, and even were matters as you suppose them, without any
warrant,--there is at least one silly stumbling knave that dares as
much. Saith he: 'What is the most precious thing in the world?--Why,
assuredly, Dame Melicent's welfare. Let me get the keeping of it, then.
For I have been entrusted with a host of common priceless things--with
youth and vigour and honour, with a clean conscience and a child's
faith, and so on--and no person alive has squandered them more
gallantly. So heartward ho! and trust me now, my timorous yoke-fellow,
to win and squander also the chiefest jewel of the world.' Eh, thus he
chuckles and nudges me, with wicked whisperings. Indeed, madame, this
rascal that shares equally in my least faculty is a most pitiful,
ignoble rogue! and he has aforetime eked out our common livelihood by
such practices as your unsullied imagination could scarcely depicture.
Until I knew you I had endured him. But you have made of him a horror.
A horror, a horror! a thing too pitiful for hell!"
Perion turned away from her, groaning. He flung himself into a chair.
He screened his eyes as if before some physical abomination.
The girl kneeled close to him, touching him.
"My dear, my dear! then slay for me this other Perion of the Forest."
And Perion laughed, not very mirthfully.
"It is the common usage of women to ask of men this little labour,
which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of
heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested
weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered
no formidable enemy save myself; but that same midnight stabber
unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough
until you came.... Ah, child, child! why needed you to trouble me! for
to-night I want to be clean as you are clean, and that I may not ever
be. I am garrisoned with devils, I am the battered plaything of every
vice, and I lack the strength, and it may be, even the will, to leave
my mire. Always I have betrayed the stewardship of man and god alike
that my body might escape a momentary discomfort! And loving you as I
do, I cannot swear that in the outcome I would not betray you too, to
this same end! I cannot swear--Oh, now let Satan laugh, yet not
unpitifully, since he and I, alone, know all the reasons why I may not
swear! Hah, Madame Melicent!" cried Perion, in his great agony, "you
offer me that gift an emperor might not accept save in awed gratitude;
and I refuse it." Gently he raised her to her feet. "And now, in God's
name, go, madame, and leave the prodigal among his husks."
"You are a very brave and foolish gentleman," she said, "who chooses to
face his own achievements without any paltering. To every man, I think,
that must be bitter work; to the woman who loves him it is impossible."
Perion could not see her face, because he lay prone at the feet of
Melicent, sobbing, but without any tears, and tasting very deeply of
such grief and vain regret as, he had thought, they know in hell alone;
and even after she had gone, in silence, he lay in this same posture
for an exceedingly long while.
And after he knew not how long a while, Perion propped his chin between
his hands and, still sprawling upon the rushes, stared hard into the
little, crackling fire. He was thinking of a Perion de la Forêt that
once had been. In him might have been found a fit mate for Melicent had
this boy not died very long ago.
It is no more cheerful than any other mortuary employment, this
disinterment of the person you have been, and are not any longer; and
so did Perion find his cataloguing of irrevocable old follies and
evasions.
Then Perion arose and looked for pen and ink. It was the first letter
he ever wrote to Melicent, and, as you will presently learn, she never
saw it.
In such terms Perion wrote:
"Madame--It may please you to remember that when Dame Mélusine and I
were interrogated, I freely confessed to the murder of King Helmas and
the theft of my dead master's jewels. In that I lied. For it was my
manifest duty to save the woman whom, as I thought, I loved, and it was
apparent that the guilty person was either she or I.
"She is now at Brunbelois, where, as I have heard, the splendour of her
estate is tolerably notorious. I have not ever heard she gave a thought
to me, her cat's-paw. Madame, when I think of you and then of that
sleek, smiling woman, I am appalled by my own folly. I am aghast by my
long blindness as I write the words which no one will believe. To what
avail do I deny a crime which every circumstance imputed to me and my
own confession has publicly acknowledged?
"But you, I think, will believe me. Look you, madame, I have nothing to
gain of you. I shall not ever see you any more. I go into a perilous
and an eternal banishment; and in the immediate neighbourhood of death
a man finds little sustenance for romance. Take the worst of me: a
gentleman I was born, and as a wastrel I have lived, and always very
foolishly; but without dishonour. I have never to my knowledge--and God
judge me as I speak the truth!--wronged any man or woman save myself.
My dear, believe me! believe me, in spite of reason! and understand
that my adoration and misery and unworthiness when I think of you are
such as I cannot measure, and afford me no judicious moment wherein to
fashion lies. For I shall not see you any more.
"I thank you, madame, for your all-unmerited kindnesses, and, oh, I
pray you to believe!"
4.
_How the Bishop Aided Perion_
Then at three o'clock, as Perion supposed, someone tapped upon the
door. Perion went out into the corridor, which was now unlighted, so
that he had to hold to the cloak of Ayrart de Montors as the young
prelate guided Perion through the complexities of unfamiliar halls and
stairways into an inhospitable night. There were ready two horses, and
presently the men were mounted and away.
Once only Perion shifted in the saddle to glance back at Bellegarde,
black and formless against an empty sky; and he dared not look again,
for the thought of her that lay awake in the Marshal's Tower, so near
at hand as yet, was like a dagger. With set teeth he followed in the
wake of his taciturn companion. The bishop never spoke save to growl
out some direction.
Thus they came to Manneville and, skirting the town, came to Fomor
Beach, a narrow sandy coast. It was dark in this place and very still
save for the encroachment of the tide. Yonder were four little lights,
lazily heaving with the water's motion, to show them where the
_Tranchemer_ lay at anchor. It did not seem to Perion that anything
mattered.
"It will be nearing dawn by this," he said.
"Ay," Ayrart de Montors said, very briefly; and his tone evinced his
willingness to dispense with further conversation. Perion of the Forest
was an unclean thing which the bishop must touch in his necessity, but
could touch with loathing only, as a thirsty man takes a fly out of his
drink. Perion conceded it, because nothing would ever matter any more;
and so, the horses tethered, they sat upon the sand in utter silence
for the space of a half hour.
A bird cried somewhere, just once, and with a start Perion knew the
night was not quite so murky as it had been, for he could now see a
broken line of white, where the tide crept up and shattered and ebbed.
Then in a while a light sank tipsily to the water's level and presently
was bobbing in the darkness, apart from those other lights, and it was
growing in size and brilliancy.
Said Perion, "They have sent out the boat."
"Ay," the bishop answered, as before.
A sort of madness came upon Perion, and it seemed that he must weep,
because everything fell out so very ill in this world.
"Messire de Montors, you have aided me. I would be grateful if you
permitted it."
De Montors spoke at last, saying crisply:
"Gratitude, I take it, forms no part of the bargain. I am the kinsman
of Dame Melicent. It makes for my interest and for the honour of our
house that the man whose rooms she visits at night be got out of
Poictesme--"
Said Perion, "You speak in this fashion of the most lovely lady God has
made--of her whom the world adores!"
"Adores!" the bishop answered, with a laugh; "and what poor gull am I
to adore an attested wanton?" Then, with a sneer, he spoke of Melicent,
and in such terms as are not bettered by repetition.
Perion said:
"I am the most unhappy man alive, as surely as you are the most
ungenerous. For, look you, in my presence you have spoken infamy of
Dame Melicent, though knowing I am in your debt so deeply that I have
not the right to resent anything you may elect to say. You have just
given me my life; and armoured by the fire-new obligation, you
blaspheme an angel, you condescend to buffet a fettered man--"
But with that his sluggish wits had spied an honest way out of the
imbroglio.
Perion said then, "Draw, messire! for, as God lives, I may yet
repurchase, at this eleventh hour, the privilege of destroying you."
"Heyday! but here is an odd evincement of gratitude!" de Montors
retorted; "and though I am not particularly squeamish, let me tell you,
my fine fellow, I do not ordinarily fight with lackeys."
"Nor are you fit to do so, messire. Believe me, there is not a lackey
in this realm--no, not a cut-purse, nor any pander--who would not in
meeting you upon equal footing degrade himself. For you have slandered
that which is most perfect in the world; yet lies, Messire de Montors,
have short legs; and I design within the hour to insure the calumny
against an echo."
"Rogue, I have given you your very life within the hour--"
"The fact is undeniable. Thus I must fling the bounty back to you, so
that we sorry scoundrels may meet as equals." Perion wheeled toward the
boat, which was now within the reach of wading. "Who is among you?
Gaucelm, Roger, Jean Britauz--" He found the man he sought. "Ahasuerus,
the captain that was to have accompanied the Free Companions oversea is
of another mind. I cede my leadership to Landry de Bonnay. You will
have the kindness to inform him of the unlooked-for change, and to
tender your new captain every appropriate regret and the dying
felicitations of Perion de la Forêt."
He bowed toward the landward twilight, where the sand hillocks were
taking form.
"Messire de Montors, we may now resume our vigil. When yonder vessel
sails there will be no conceivable happening that can keep breath
within my body two weeks longer. I shall be quit of every debt to you.
You will then fight with a man already dead if you so elect; but
otherwise--if you attempt to flee this place, if you decline to cross
swords with a lackey, with a convicted thief, with a suspected
murderer, I swear upon my mother's honour! I will demolish you without
compunction, as I would any other vermin."
"Oh, brave, brave!" sneered the bishop, "to fling away your life, and
perhaps mine too, for an idle word--" But at that he fetched a sob. "How
foolish of you! and how like you!" he said, and Perion wondered at this
prelate's voice.
"Hey, gentlemen!" cried Ayrart de Montors, "a moment if you please!" He
splashed knee-deep into the icy water, wading to the boat, where he
snatched the lantern from the Jew's hands and fetched this light
ashore. He held it aloft, so that Perion might see his face, and Perion
perceived that, by some wonder-working, the person in man's attire who
held this light aloft was Melicent. It was odd that Perion always
remembered afterward most clearly of all the loosened wisp of hair the
wind tossed about her forehead.
"Look well upon me, Perion," said Melicent. "Look well, ruined
gentleman! look well, poor hunted vagabond! and note how proud I am.
Oh, in all things I am very proud! A little I exult in my high station
and in my wealth, and, yes, even in my beauty, for I know that I am
beautiful, but it is the chief of all my honours that you love me--and
so foolishly!"
"You do not understand--!" cried Perion.
"Rather I understand at last that you are in sober verity a lackey, an
impostor, and a thief, even as you said. Ay, a lackey to your honour!
an imposter that would endeavour--and, oh, so very vainly!--to
impersonate another's baseness! and a thief that has stolen another
person's punishment! I ask no questions; loving means trusting; but I
would like to kill that other person very, very slowly. I ask no
questions, but I dare to trust the man I know of, even in defiance of
that man's own voice. I dare protest the man no thief, but in all
things a madly honourable gentleman. My poor bruised, puzzled boy," said
Melicent, with an odd mirthful tenderness, "how came you to be
blundering about this miry world of ours! Only be very good for my sake
and forget the bitterness; what does it matter when there is happiness,
too?"
He answered nothing, but it was not because of misery.
"Come, come, will you not even help me into the boat?" said Melicent.
She, too, was glad.
5.
_How Melicent Wedded_
"That may not be, my cousin."
It was the real Bishop of Montors who was speaking. His company, some
fifteen men in all, had ridden up while Melicent and Perion looked
seaward. The bishop was clothed, in his habitual fashion, as a
cavalier, showing in nothing as a churchman. He sat a-horseback for a
considerable while, looking down at them, smiling and stroking the
pommel of his saddle with a gold-fringed glove. It was now dawn.
"I have been eavesdropping," the bishop said. His voice was tender, for
the young man loved his kinswoman with an affection second only to that
which he reserved for Ayrart de Montors. "Yes, I have been
eavesdropping for an instant, and through that instant I seemed to see
the heart of every woman that ever lived; and they differed only as
stars differ on a fair night in August. No woman ever loved a man
except, at bottom, as a mother loves her child: let him elect to build
a nation or to write imperishable verses or to take purses upon the
highway, and she will only smile to note how breathlessly the boy goes
about his playing; and when he comes back to her with grimier hands she
is a little sorry, and, if she think it salutary, will pretend to be
angry. Meanwhile she sets about the quickest way to cleanse him and to
heal his bruises. They are more wise than we, and at the bottom of
their hearts they pity us more stalwart folk whose grosser wits
require, to be quite sure of anything, a mere crass proof of it; and
always they make us better by indomitably believing we are better than
in reality a man can ever be."
Now Ayrart de Montors dismounted.
"So much for my sermon. For the rest, Messire de la Forêt, I perfectly
recognised you on the day you came to Bellegarde. But I said nothing.
For that you had not murdered King Helmas, as is popularly reported, I
was certain, inasmuch as I happen to know he is now at Brunbelois,
where Dame Mélusine holds his person and his treasury. A terrible,
delicious woman! begotten on a water-demon, people say. I ask no
questions. She is a close and useful friend to me, and through her aid
I hope to go far. You see that I am frank. It is my nature." The bishop
shrugged. "In a phrase, I accepted the Vicomte de Puysange, although it
was necessary, of course, to keep an eye upon your comings in and your
goings out, as you now see. And until this the imposture amused me. But
this"--his hand waved toward the _Tranchemer_--"this, my fair friends,
is past a jest."
"You talk and talk," cried Perion, "while I reflect that I love the
fairest lady who at any time has had life upon earth."
"The proof of your affection," the bishop returned, "is, if you will
permit the observation, somewhat extraordinary. For you propose, I
gather, to make of her a camp-follower, a soldier's drab. Come, come,
messire! you and I are conversant with warfare as it is. Armies do not
conduct encounters by throwing sugar-candy at one another. What home
have you, a landless man, to offer Melicent? What place is there for
Melicent among your Free Companions?"
"Oh, do I not know that!" said Perion. He turned to Melicent, and long
and long they gazed upon each other.
"Ignoble as I am," said Perion, "I never dreamed to squire an angel
down toward the mire and filth which for a while as yet must be my
kennel. I go. I go alone. Do you bid me return?"
The girl was perfectly calm. She took a ring of diamonds from her hand,
and placed it on his little finger, because the others were too large.
"While life endures I pledge you faith and service, Perion. There is no
need to speak of love."
"There is no need," he answered. "Oh, does God think that I will live
without you!"
"I suppose they will give me to King Theodoret. The terrible old man
has set my body as the only price that will buy him off from ravaging
Poictesme, and he is stronger in the field than Emmerick. Emmerick is
afraid of him, and Ayrart here has need of the King's friendship in
order to become a cardinal. So my kinsmen must make traffic of my eyes
and lips and hair. But first I wed you, Perion, here in the sight of
God, and I bid you return to me, who am your wife and servitor for ever
now, whatever lesser men may do."
"I will return," he said.
Then in a little while she withdrew her lips from his lips.
"Cover my face, Ayrart. It may be I shall weep presently. Men must not
see the wife of Perion weep. Cover my face, for he is going now, and I
cannot watch his going."
PART TWO
MELICENT
_Of how through love is Melicent upcast
Under a heathen castle at the last:
And how a wicked lord of proud degree,
Demetrios, dwelleth in this country,
Where humbled under him are all mankind:
How to this wretched woman he hath mind,
That fallen is in pagan lands alone,
In point to die, as presently is shown._
6.
_How Melicent Sought Oversea_
It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how love began
between Perion of the Forest, who was a captain of mercenaries, and
young Melicent, who was daughter to the great Dom Manuel, and sister to
Count Emmerick of Poictesme. They tell also how Melicent and Perion
were parted, because there was no remedy, and policy demanded she
should wed King Theodoret.