The Castle of Twilight
[Illustration: Lenore]
[Illustration]
THE CASTLE OF TWILIGHT
_By_ MARGARET HORTON POTTER
_With six Illustrations by Ch. Weber_
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO
_1903_
COPYRIGHT
A. C. MCCLURG & CO.
1903
Published September 26, 1903
DESIGNED, ARRANGED, AND PRINTED
BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TO
G. M. McB.
WHOSE MUSIC SUGGESTED THE STORY
_This little volume is faithfully
inscribed_
[Illustration:
Nocturne—Grieg: Opus 54, No. 4.
]
[Illustration]
TABLE · OF CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD vii
CHAPTER
I. THE DESOLATION OF AGE 1
II. THE SILENCE OF YOUTH 29
III. FLAMMECŒUR 62
IV. THE PASSION 94
V. SHADOWS 121
VI. A LOVE-STRAIN 154
VII. THE LOST LENORE 177
VIII. TO A TRUMPET-CALL 209
IX. THE STORM 235
X. FROM RENNES 260
XI. THE WANDERER 286
XII. LAURE 316
XIII. LENORE 347
XIV. ELEANORE 378
XV. THE RISING TIDE 401
XVI. THE MIDDLE OF THE VALLEY 423
[Illustration]
LIST · OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lenore _Frontispiece_
_Page_
The whole Castle had assembled to say God-speed to their
departing lord 90
Only one among them seemed not of their mood 180
“Gerault—Gerault—my lord!” she whispered 276
Mother and child were happy to sit all day in the
flower-strewn meadow 336
Hand in hand, by the murmurous sea, they walked 416
* * * * *
_The decorations for title-page, end-papers, and chapter initials are by
Miss Mabel Harlow_
_FOREWORD_
_Wistfully I deliver up to you my simple story, knowing that the first
suggestion of “historical novel” will bring before you an image of
dreary woodenness and unceasing carnage. Yet if you will have the
graciousness but to unlock my castle door you will find within only two
or three quiet folk who will distress you with no battles nor strange
oaths. Even in the days of rival Princes and never-ending wars there
dwelt still a few who took no part in the moil of life, but lived with
gentle pleasures and unvoiced sorrows, somewhat as you and I; wherefore,
I pray you, cross the moat. The drawbridge is down for you, and will not
be raised, if, after introduction to the Chatelaine, you desire speedily
to retreat._
_M. H. P._
[Illustration]
_The_ CASTLE _of_ TWILIGHT
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER ONE_
THE DESOLATION OF AGE
[Illustration]
It was mid-April: a sunny afternoon. A flood of golden light, borne on
gusts of sweet, chilly air, poured through the open windows of the
Castle into a high-vaulted, massively furnished bedroom, hung with
tapestries, and strewn with dry rushes. A heavy silence that was less a
thing of the moment than a part of the general atmosphere hovered about
the room; and it was not lessened by the unceasing murmur of ocean waves
breaking upon the face of the cliff on which the Castle stood. This
sound held in it a note of unutterable melancholy. Indeed, despite the
sunlight, the sparkle of the waves, and the fragrance of the fresh
spring air, this whole building, the culminating point of a long slope
of landscape, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of loneliness, of sadness,
of lifelessness, that found full expression in the attitude of the
black-robed woman who knelt alone in the high-vaulted bedroom.
Eleanore was kneeling at her priedieu. Madame Eleanore knelt at her
priedieu, and did not pray. Nay, the great grief, the unvoiced
bitterness in her heart, killed prayer. For, henceforth, there was one
near and unbearably dear to her who must be praying for evermore. And it
was this thought and the vista of her future lonely years that denied
her, even as she knelt, the consolation of religion.
To the still solitude of her bedchamber, and always to the foot of her
crucifix, the chatelaine of Le Crépuscule was accustomed to bring her
griefs; and there had been many griefs and some very bitter ones in the
thirty-four years that she had reigned as mistress over the Castle. But
this last was one that, trained though she was in the ways of sorrow,
defied all comfort, denied the right of consolation, and forbade even
the relief of an appeal to the All-merciful. Laure, her daughter, the
star of her solitude, the youth and the joy of her life, the object of
all the blind devotion of which her mother-soul was capable, had this
morning entered upon her novitiate at the convent of the Virgins of the
Magdalen. Although Madame Eleanore’s family was celebrated for its
piety, though many a generation of Lavals and Crépuscules had rendered a
daughter to the eternal worship of God, there were still no records left
in either family of a great mother-grief when the daughter left her
home. But madame, Laval as she was, Crépuscule as she had learned to be,
could not find it in her heart to praise God for the loss of her child.
Once again, after many years, years that she could look back upon now as
filled with broad content, she was alone. Not since, many, many years
ago, she had come to the Castle as a girl-bride, wife of a military
lord, had such utter desolation held her in its bonds,—such desolation
as, after the coming of her two children, she had thought never to feel
again. In the days after the Seigneur’s first early departure for
Rennes, without her, she had felt as now. It came back very vividly to
her memory, how he had ridden away for the capital, the city of war, of
arms, of glittering shield and piercing lance, of tourney and laughter
and song; how she had longed in silence to ride thither at his side; how
she had wept when he was really gone; how she had watched bitterly, day
after day, for his return up the steep road that came out of the forest
on the edge of the sand-downs below. Clearly indeed did her youth return
to Eleanore as she knelt here, in the barred sunlight, alone with her
unheeding crucifix. And intertwined with this memory was the new sense
of blinding sorrow, the loss of Laure.
The reality, as it came to her, seemed even now vague and impossible.
Laure, her girl, her strong, wild, adventurous, high-hearted, fearless
girl, to become a nun! Laure, of whom, in her own way, Eleanore had been
accustomed to think as she thought of the great white gulls that veered,
through sunlight and storm, on straight-stretched pinions, along the
rocky coast, as a creature of light, of air, above all of perfect,
indestructible freedom! This, her Laure, to become a nun! Spite of what
the Bishop of St. Nazaire had so earnestly told her, how, in all strong
natures, there are strong antitheses and quiet, governing depths that no
outer turbulence can disclose, Eleanore rebelled at the disposal that
had been made of this nature. She knew herself too well to believe that
her daughter could renounce all the joys of youth and of life without a
single after-pang.
After this early mother-thought for the child’s state, Eleanore’s
self-grief returned again with redoubled force; and her brain conjured
up a vision of the future,—that great, shadowy future, that wrapped her
heart around in a cold and deadening despair.
The April wind blew higher through the room, catching the tapestry
curtains of the immense bed and waving them about like blue banners. The
bars of sunlight mellowed and broadened over the shrunken rushes and the
smooth stones of the floor. The surf boomed louder as the tide advanced.
And Eleanore, still upon her knees, rocked her body in her helpless
rebellion, and found it in her heart to question the righteous wisdom of
her God. She did not, however, come quite to this; for which,
afterwards, she found it expedient to give thanks to the same deity. Her
solitude was unexpectedly broken. There came a knock upon the door,
which immediately afterwards opened, and Gerault, her son, entered the
room.
This fourth Seigneur of Le Crépuscule, a dark-browed, lean, and rather
handsome fellow, clad in half armor and carrying on his wrist a falcon,
jessed and belled, was the first of Eleanore’s two children. She
reverenced him as his father’s successor; she held affection for him
because she had borne him; and she respected him and his wishes because
he was a man that commanded respect. But perhaps it was this very
respect, which had in it something of distance, that killed in her the
overwhelming love which she had always felt for his sister Laure, her
youngest and beloved.
Gerault, seeing his mother’s attitude, stopped short in the doorway.
“Madame, I crave pardon! I had not known you were at prayer,” he said.
Eleanore rose from her knees a little hastily. “Nay, Gerault, I was not
at prayer. ’Tis an old custom of mine to meditate in that place. Enter
thou and sit with me for a little.”
Gerault bowed silently and accepted her invitation by seating himself
near one of the windows on a wooden settle. His silence seemed to demand
speech from his mother. But Eleanore, once on her feet, had begun slowly
to pace the floor of her room, at the same time losing herself again in
her own thoughts.
Without speaking and without any discomfort at the continued silence,
Gerault watched his mother—contemplated her, rather—as she walked. Often
he had felt a pride—a pride that suggested patronage—in that walk of
madame’s. Never, in any woman, had he seen such a carriage, such
conscious poise, such dignity, such command. In his heart her son,
somewhat given to irreverent observation and analysis of those about
him, had named her the “Quiet-Browed,” and the very fact that he could
have seen somewhat below the surface and yet named her thus, was
evidence enough of her powers of self-control. It was he who finally
broke the silence between them.
“Well, madame, the change in our house hath taken place. Laure’s new
life is safely begun; and she hath given what she could to the honor of
our race. Now that it is done, I return to Rennes, to the side of my
Lord Duke.”
Eleanore made no pause in her walk, nor did she betray by the slightest
gesture her feeling at the announcement. Too many times before had she
experienced this same sensation. After a few seconds she asked quietly:
“When do you go?”
In spite of her self-control, her voice had been a strain off the key,
and now Gerault looked at her keenly, asking: “There is a reason why I
should not ride to Rennes? I have not thy permission to go?”
Eleanore paused in her walk to turn and look at him. There was just a
suggestion of scorn in her attitude. “Reason! Permission! Was ever a
reason why a Crépuscule might not fare forth to Rennes, or one that
asked permission of a woman ere he went?”
Again Gerault looked at her, this time in that dignified disapproval
that man uses to cover an unlooked-for mortification. And the Seigneur
was decidedly lofty as he said: “I have given thee pain, madame, though
of how, or wherefore, I am wofully ignorant.”
“Pain, Gerault? Pain?” Eleanore repressed herself again and immediately
resumed her walk. In a few seconds the calm, quiet dignity returned, her
mask was replaced, every vestige of her feeling hidden, and she had
become once more the châtelaine of unvoiced loneliness. Then she went on
speaking: “Pain, Gerault? Surely not. Know I not enough of Rennes that I
should not be well content to have thee in that lordly place, with thy
rightful companions, men of thy blood? Shall I not send thee gayly forth
again to that trysting-place of knightly arms?”
“And yet, madame, I did but now surprise in thy face a look of sorrow,
of some unhappiness, that is new to it.”
“Well, even so?”
“Ah, yes! It is Laure’s departure. Yet that must not be too much
mourned. Laure’s wild ways had come to be a source of uneasiness to both
of us at times. ’Tis true that there is lost an alliance that might have
brought much honor to Le Crépuscule. By the favor of my Lord Duke, Laure
might have wed with Grantmesnil, Senlis, Angers itself, perhaps; and
there was ever Laval.—Yet—”
He paused musingly, not seeing the look that had come back into the face
of madame. Only when she stopped again and turned to him did he utter a
soft exclamation, half surprise and half helpless apology. But Eleanore,
smiling at him sadly, began, in that voice that had long been tuned to
the stillness of the Castle: “If I could but make thee understand,
Gerault! If I could make thee look upon my hours of loneliness here—and
see—Gerault, it is not a matter of alliance, or of honor, or of
dishonor, with Laure. It is that she was my child, my daughter, my
companion—how adored!—here, in this—this great Castle of Twilight.
Neither thou nor any man can know what our lives are.—But think,
Gerault—think of me and of the Castle after thou art gone. What is there
for me here? The tasks that I invent to fill the hours are useless to
deaden thought. They are not changed from the occupations of thirty
years ago. Nor, methinks, have women known aught else than spinning,
weaving, sewing, spinning again, since the days of the earliest
kings,—the Kings of Jerusalem.—And day after day through the long years
I dwell here in this barren spot—dependent on others for what happiness
I am to get in my life. And now—now the Church, in which always my hope
of another, better life hath lain, taketh my child from me. Let then the
Church give me something in place of her! Let the Church pay back
something of its debt. And thou also, my son,—give me some help to live
through the unending days of thy absence in Rennes.”
“I, madame!—the Church!—What art thou saying?”
“Hast thou not heard me?”
“I have heard. But what shall I do, my mother?”
“Listen, Gerault. The Church hath taken a daughter from me. Thou, by the
aid of the Church, canst give me another. Gerault, thou must marry.
Marry, my son. Bring thy wife home to me!”
Gerault sprang to his feet with an expression on his face that his
mother had never before called there. For a moment he looked at her, his
eyes saying what his lips would not. Then, gradually, the fire in his
face died down, and he reseated himself slowly on the settle, while the
bird on his wrist, a wild _hagard_, fluttered its wings, and dug its
talons painfully into the knight’s flesh.
“Marry!” said Gerault, at length, in a voice that sounded strange to his
own ears. “Marry! Hast thou forgotten?”
“Nay, I have not forgotten; nor has anyone in the Castle. But thou,
Gerault, must forget. It is now five years since, and thou art more than
come to man’s estate. Even then thou wast not young.—Nay, Gerault, I do
not forget that cruel thing. Yet we must all go.—And ere I die I must
see thee wed. ’Tis not only for myself, child. It is for the house, and
the line of Crépuscule. Shall it be lost in four generations?”
Frowning, Gerault rose. “Well, madame, not as yet have I seen in
Brittany the maid that I would wed, barring always—” He shook himself to
dissipate the memory that was on him. “To-morrow I and Courtoise ride
forth to Rennes. Let me now leave thee once more to thy meditations.”
Gerault went to the door, opened it, turned to look once at his mother,
whose face he could not see, and then, with an audible sigh, went
quietly away. Each was ignorant of the other’s feelings. As Eleanore
moved over toward the open windows that looked off upon the sea, her
eyes, tear-blinded, saw nothing of the broad plain of blue and sparkling
gold that stretched infinitely away before her. Nor did she dream of the
spirit of reawakened bitterness and desolation that her words had
conjured up in Gerault’s heart. But the Seigneur’s calm and unruffled
expression concealed a very storm of reawakened misery as he descended
the great stone staircase of the Castle, passed through the empty lower
hall, and so out into the courtyard.
This courtyard was always the liveliest spot about the chateau. Le
Crépuscule itself was very large, and its adjacent buildings were on a
corresponding scale. Like all the feudal fortress-castles of its time,
it was almost a little city in itself. It dated from the year 1203, and
had been built by the first lord of the name, Bernard, a left-handed
scion of Coucy, who had been called Crépuscule from his colors, two
contrasting shades of gray. Since his time, each of its lords had added
to its strength or its convenience, till now, in the year 1380, it was
the strongest chateau on the South Breton coast. One side was built on
the very edge of an immense cliff against which the Atlantic surf had
beaten unceasingly through the ages. The other three sides were well
protected, first by a heavy wall that surrounded the whole courtyard
with its various buildings, beyond which came a broad strip of garden
land and pasturage, bounded on the far side by the second, or lower
wall, and a dry moat. The keep was of a size proportionate to the
Castle; and the number of men-at-arms that were kept in it taxed the
coffers of the rather meagre estate to the utmost for food and pay.
When Gerault entered the courtyard a girl stood drawing water from the
round, stone well. Two or three henchmen lolled in the doorway of the
keep, chaffing a peasant who had come up the hill from one of the manor
farms carrying eggs in a big basket. Just outside the stables, which
occupied the whole east side of the courtyard, a boy stood rubbing down
a sleek, white palfrey. All of these people respectfully saluted their
lord, who returned them rather a curt recognition as he passed round the
west tower on his way to a little narrow building just in front of the
north gate, in which his falcons were housed through the winter. Gerault
had a great passion for hawking, and his birds were always objects of
solicitude with him. He and Courtoise, his squire, were accustomed to
spend much time together in this little building, and in the open-air
falconry on the terrace outside the north gate, where young birds or
newly captured ones were trained.
Just now Gerault stood in the doorway of the falcon-house, looking
around him for Courtoise, whom he had thought to find within. He was
speaking to the bird on his wrist, his mind still occupied with the
recent talk with his mother, when, through the gate, came a burst of
laughter and song, and he raised his eyes to see a giddy company swaying
toward him in the measure of a “carole”[1] led by Courtoise and Laure’s
foster-sister, Alixe la Rieuse. Moving a little out of their way he
stood and watched the group go by,—the demoiselles and the squires of
the Castle household, retained by his mother as company for herself,
also to be trained in etiquette according to their several stations. And
a pretty enough company of youth and gayety they were: Berthe, Yseult,
Isabelle, Viviane, daughters all of noble houses; with Roland of St.
Bertaux, Louis of Florence, Robert Meloc, and Guy d’Armenonville, called
“le Trouvé.” But, of them all, Alixe, surnamed the Laughing One, was the
brightest of eye, the warmest of color, and the lightest of foot.
Footnote 1:
A “carole” was originally a dance to which the dancers sang their own
accompaniment.
As they went by, Gerault signalled to his squire, Courtoise, and the
young fellow would have disengaged himself immediately from his
companions, but that Alixe suddenly broke her step, dropped the hand of
Robert Meloc, who was behind her, and leaving the company, ran to
Gerault’s side, dragging Courtoise with her. The dance ceased while the
young people stood still, staring at their erstwhile leaders. Alixe,
however, impatiently motioned them on.
“Go back to the Castle with your ‘Roi qui ne ment pas.’[2] I will come
soon.”
Footnote 2:
An old-time game.
Obedient to her command, the little company resumed their quaint song,
and, with steps that lagged a little, passed into the Castle, leaving
their arbitrary leader behind them, with the Seigneur and his squire.
Gerault was silent till the young people had gone. Then he turned to
Alixe, but, before he had time to speak, she broke in hastily:
“Let me go with you to the falcons. You must see Bec-Hardi sit upon my
wrist, and attack his _pât_ on the rope.”
“Diable!—Bec-Hardi!—Thou hast a genius with the birds, Alixe. The
_hagard_ will not move for me.” Gerault was all attention to her now.
Alixe did not answer his praise, but started quickly forward toward the
gate through which she had just come, beyond which was the strip of turf
where the falcons lived in summer. Gerault and Courtoise followed her at
a slower pace, and she caught some disjointed words spoken by the
Seigneur behind her:—“Rennes”—“to-morrow”—“horses.”
As these came to her ears, Alixe’s steps grew laggard, for she had put
the thoughts together, and instantly her mood changed from golden
irresponsibility to dull and dreary melancholy. For a long time she had
concealed in her heart the deep sorrow that she felt at the prospective
loss of her life-playmate, Laure, now actually gone, and gone forever.
She had resigned herself to the thought of solitary adventures on moor
and cliff, and lonely sails on the breezy, treacherous bay, in a more
than treacherous boat,—such wild and risky amusements as she and the
daughter of Le Crépuscule had loved to indulge together. Laure was gone,
and she had kept herself from tears. But now—now, at these words of
Gerault’s, there suddenly rose before her a vivid picture of life in the
Castle without either brother or sister. Toward Gerault she had no such
feeling as that which she had held for Laure. He was a man to her, and
the fact made a vast difference. At times she entertained for him a
violent enthusiasm; at other times she treated him with infinite scorn.
But till now she had never confessed, even to herself, how much interest
he had added to the monotonous Castle life. Considering her wayward
nature, it was certainly anomalous that, in her first rush of
displeasure, there came to her the thought of Eleanore, the mother now
doubly bereft. And for madame she felt a sympathy that was entirely new.
Gerault and his squire reached the outdoor falconry before Alixe, whom
they perceived to have fallen into one of her sudden reveries.
Accustomed to her rapid changes of mood, neither man took much heed of
her slow steps and bent head. And when she reached the falconry and saw
the birds, her interest in them brought over her again a wave of
animation.
The outdoor falconry was a long strip of turf that lay between the
flower-terrace and the kitchen-garden. Into this turf had been driven
about twenty heavy stakes, to which were nailed wooden cross-pieces. On
nearly every one of these a falcon perched, and a strong cord, tied
about one leg, fastened each to his own stake. At sight of their master,
whom they knew perfectly well, all the birds set up a peculiar, harsh
cry, at the same time eagerly flapping their wings, appealing, as best
they could, for an hour or two of freedom. Alixe ran at once down to the
end of the second row of stakes, where sat a half-grown bird, striking
viciously at his perch with his iron beak.
Courtoise and Gerault ceased their conversation when Alixe went up to
this bird and addressed it in a curious jargon of Latin and
Breton-French. Courtoise betrayed an admiring interest when she stooped
to lay her hand on the bird’s feathers; and Gerault called
involuntarily,—
“Have a care, Alixe!”
The girl, however, had her way with the creature. At sound of her voice
it became attentive. At the touch of her hand it half raised its wings,
the motion indicating expectant delight. In a moment more it had hopped
upon the girl’s wrist, and sat there, swaying and preening contentedly.
“Sang Dieu, Alixe, thou hast done that well! Thou sayest he will also
attack the _pât_ from your hand?”
Alixe merely nodded. To all appearances, she was wholly engrossed with
the bird, which she continued to handle. Gerault and Courtoise had come
close to her side, though the falcon betrayed its displeasure at their
approach. All three of them had been silent for some seconds, when Alixe
turned her green eyes upon the Seigneur, and, looking at him with a
glance that carried discomfort with it, said in a very precise and
cutting tone:
“So you leave Le Crépuscule to-morrow, Gerault? And for how long?”
“That I cannot tell,” answered Gerault, exhibiting no annoyance. “For as
long a time as Duke Jean will accept my services.”
“Ah! then there will be fighting. I had not heard of a war. Tell me of
it.”
Gerault became suddenly embarrassed and correspondingly displeased. “Of
what import can it be to you, a woman, whether there is war or peace?”
he inquired.
“Oh, there is great import.”
“Prithee, what may it be?”
“This: that an there were indeed a war thou mightest be forgiven thy
great selfishness in going forth to pleasure, leaving thy mother here in
her loneliness and sorrow; whereas—”
“Silence, Alixe! Thine insolence merits the whip,” cried Courtoise.
“Peace, boy!” said Gerault, shortly, and forthwith turned again to the
demoiselle. “And is not my mother long accustomed to this life, and well
content with it? Is she not lady of a great castle, mistress of enviable
estates? Hath she not a position to be proud of? From her speech and
thine one might think—” he snapped his fingers impatiently.—“Come you
with me, Alixe. Let us walk here together on the turf, while I say to
you certain things. Thou, Courtoise, return to the Castle if thou wilt.”
The squire, however, chose to remain in the field, and stood leaning
against the wall, watching the falcons at his feet, and whistling under
his breath for his own amusement. Alixe replaced Bec-Hardi, screaming
angrily and flapping its wings, and moved off beside Gerault, her long
red houppelande and mantle trailing upon the grass round her feet, the
veil from her filet flowing behind her nearly to the ground. Long time
these two, Lord of Le Crépuscule and his almost sister, walked together
in the sunny light of the late afternoon. And long Courtoise the squire
watched them as they went. Although Gerault had said, somewhat in ire,
that he had a matter to speak of with her, it was Alixe that talked the
most, and from his manner it could be seen that Gerault was fallen very
much under the influence of her peculiar insistence. What it was they
spoke of, Courtoise could only guess—and fear. For, though he might hold
in his heart some sympathy with madame in her loneliness, yet the squire
was a man, and young; and his young thoughts drew with delight the
picture of Rennes’ gayeties in the summer-time, when no war was toward
and the court alive with merriment. Indeed, it was not very wonderful
that he prayed to be off on the morrow; but the occasional glimpse that
he got of his lord’s face carried doubt into his heart.
As the squire stood there by the wall, musing, Madame Eleanore herself
came out of the courtyard into the field. Her rosary hung from her
waist, and in her hand was a little volume of Latin prayers. In some
way, of which she was probably unconscious, the placid manner of her as
she came into the field for her evening walk caused Courtoise’s idle
dreams of gayety to vanish away, and the present, so tinged with the
spirit of sweet melancholy, to become the only reality. The squire at
once advanced toward his lady, while, ere he reached her, Alixe and
Gerault had halted at her side.
“Indeed, my mother, thou art well come hither at this time. Prithee join
us in our walk. For some time past Alixe and I have been speaking of
thee. See, the air is sweet, for it comes off the fields to-night.”
“Indeed, ’tis sweet—sweeter than summer,” said Eleanore, smiling as she
joined the twain. “But mayhap I shall break your pleasure by coming with
you, for you are gay and young, and I—”
They moved on without having noticed him, and Courtoise lost the rest of
Eleanore’s speech. But the squire remained in the field, watching the
three move back and forth in the deepening dusk. When they came toward
him for the last time, and passed through the gate in the north wall,
returning to the Castle, all three faces were as calm as madame’s, and
Courtoise permitted himself only one sigh for the lost summer at Rennes.
Oddly enough, the squire’s regrets proved to be premature, for
immediately after the evening meal he was summoned by Gerault to the
Seigneur’s room, to make ready for the journey. Gerault did not deign to
inform his squire of the substance of his talk in the fields, but from
the tranquillity of his manner Courtoise could not but perceive that
everything had gone well. It was a late hour when all the necessary
preparations had been made; and then the two, lord and squire, went
together to the chapel and were there confessed by Anselm, the
steward-priest; after which they bade each other a good-night, and
sought their rest.
By sunrise, next morning, the whole Castle had assembled at the
drawbridge, to say God-speed to their departing lord. Madame Eleanore,
in bliault, houppelande, mantle, and coif all of black and white, held
Gerault’s stirrup-cup, and smiled as she spoke with him. There was a
chorus of chattering demoiselles and a boyish clattering of swords and
little armor-pieces from the young squires, as Gerault buckled on his
shield, whereon was wrought the motto and device of Crépuscule.
Courtoise had already fastened to his lord the golden spurs. And now the
two were mounted and ready, Gerault with lance in rest and white reins
gathered on his horse’s neck; Courtoise, brimming with delight, now and
then giving his steed a heel in flank that caused him to rear and curvet
with graceful spirit. For the last time Gerault bent to his mother’s
lips, and for the last time he looked vainly over the company for a
glimpse of Alixe, his recent mentor. Finally his spurs went home. The
drawbridge was down before him, the portcullis raised. Amid a chorus of
farewell cries, he and Courtoise swept away together, over the bridge
and down the long, gentle hill, and out upon the Rennes road, which, at
some twelve miles from Le Crépuscule, passed the priory-convent of Les
Vierges de la Madeleine.
When the twain were gone, and the group prepared to disperse,—the
squires-at-arms to their sword-practice under the captain of the keep,
the sighing demoiselles to their long morning of weaving and
embroidery,—Alixe suddenly appeared from the watch-tower close at hand,
inquiring for Madame Eleanore.
“Methinks she hath retreated to her room, to say her prayers for the
Seigneur’s safe journey,” Berthe told her. And Alixe, with a nod of
thanks, ran to the Castle, and ascended to madame’s room.
The door was open, for madame was not at prayer. She stood at the open
window, looking out upon the sea. Alixe could not see her face, but from
the line of her shoulders she read much of her lady’s heart.
“Madame,” she said, in a half-whisper.
Eleanore turned quickly. “Alixe!”
“Madame Eleanore—mother—”
A terrible sob broke from the older woman’s throat, and suddenly she
fell upon her knees beside a wooden settle, and, burying her face in her
hands, finally gave way to her desolation. Alixe, who had opened her
heart, now comforted her as best she could, soothing her, caressing her,
whispering to her in a magnetic, gentle voice, till madame’s grief had
been nearly washed away. Then the young girl said, softly, in her ear:
“Think, madame! ’tis now but eleven days till thou mayest ride out to
Laure at the priory. And there thou canst talk with her alone, and for
as long as thou wilt. Also, when her novitiate is at an end, she may
come here to thee, once in a fortnight, for so the Mother-prioress hath
said.”
Eleanore held Alixe’s hand close to her breast, and while she stroked
it, a little convulsively, she said, with returning self-control: “I
thank thee—I thank thee—Alixe, for thy good comfort.” Then, in a
different tone, she added, with a little sigh: “Eleven days—eleven
ages—how many others have I still to spend—alone?”
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER TWO_
THE SILENCE OF YOUTH
[Illustration]
The priory-convent of the Virgins of the Magdalen was as old as any
nunnery in Brittany of its repute. It had been founded in the early days
of the tenth Louis of France and his good lady of Burgundy, long before
the death of the last of the Dreux lords of the dukedom. It was
celebrated for more than its age, however; for through three centuries
it had held in ecclesiastic Brittany, for its wealth, its exclusiveness,
and, above either of these things, its unswerving chastity, a place as
unique as it was gratifying. In the year 1381 no breath of scandal had
ever disturbed its fragrant atmosphere. Moreover, though this was a fact
not much regarded by people in authority, it was a remarkably
comfortable little house, of excellent architecture and ample room for
the practice of any amount of worship. Its situation, however, was
lonely. It stood nearly at the end of the Rennes coast road, on the
outskirts of a thick forest, twenty miles from the town of St.
Nazaire-by-the-sea, and twelve from the Chateau of Le Crépuscule. And it
was here, in this pleasant if austere retreat, that many a noble lady of
Laval and Crépuscule had ended her youth and worn her life away in the
endeavor to attain undying sanctity.
On a certain afternoon in this mid-spring of 1381, the very day, indeed,
that Lord Gerault took to the Rennes road to ease his ennui, a little
company of nuns sat out in the convent garden, embroidering away their
recreation time. The day was exquisite: sunny, a little chilly, its
breeze laden with the rare perfume of awakening summer. The garden, at
this season of the year, was a place of wondrous beauty, redolent of
rich, pregnant soil, and all shimmering with the misty green of tender
grass and countless leaf-buds, from the midst of which a few flowers,
pale primroses and crocuses and a hyacinth or two, peered forth,
starring the new-planted beds with the first fruits of this new union of
earth and sky.
The spirit of the spring ruled supreme over all natural things. Only the
creatures of God, the self-consecrated nuns, sat in the midst of this
wonder of the young world, untouched by it. Heedless to the uttermost of
this greatest of worldly blessings, they sat plying their needles in and
out of their bright-colored, ecclesiastical fabrics, listening, in their
dull and dreamy way, to the voice of one of their number who was droning
out to them for the thousandth time the old and long-familiar laws of
their order, expressed in the “Rhymed Rule of St. Benedict.” One only
among them seemed not of their mood. This was a young girl, white-robed
like all the rest, her unveiled head proclaiming her novitiate. As
became her station she bent decorously to her task, and it had taken a
close observer to see and read all the little signs she gave of
consciousness of the world around her, the green, growing things, and
the liquid bird-songs that came trilling out of the forest near at hand.
Probably not even the most skilled of readers could have recognized all
the meaning in the long, slow looks, half wondrous and half probing,
with which, every now and again, she traversed the circle of faces about
her. Her self-restraint was very nearly flawless, and was successfully
maintained throughout the long period of recreation; so that not one of
her companions guessed the relief she felt when the first clang of the
vesper-bell roused them from their trance-like dulness. But the young
girl wondered a little at herself when she perceived that her brows were
damp with the sweat of the constraint.
At this time Laure of Le Crépuscule was sixteen years of age, and pretty
as a flower to look upon. She was slim and white-faced, with immense,
limpid brown eyes that were wont to move rather slowly, and burnished
brown hair hanging in twists to her knees: an object for men to rave
over, had any man worth so calling ever set eyes upon her. She was young
enough and pure enough to be of unquestioning innocence; and, until now,
the fiery life in her had found sufficient outlet in unlimited bodily
exercise. She had seen nothing of real life, and never dreamed of the
talent she possessed for it. It was from her own heart that the wish to
consecrate herself to the eternal worship of God had come; for she
believed that in this way she should find a haven for those terrible and
fathomless mental storms of which she had weathered many in her young
life, and of which her own mother never so much as dreamed. Utterly
ignorant of her real self, she was yet a girl of strong intellect, of
great versatility, of over-weening passions, and withal as feminine a
creature as the Creator ever fashioned. Both her temperament and her
appearance more resembled the dwellers of the far South—Provence or even
Navarre—than the children of the rugged, chilly shores of northern
Brittany; for her skin had the dark, creamy pallor of the South, and her
eyes held none of the keen fire that glows in the North, while her hair
grew low above her smooth, white brow.
Laure’s temperament was dramatically mobile. She adapted herself almost
unconsciously to any mode or situation of life, and this, though she did
not know it, was all that she was doing now. It was with real, if
subdued pleasure that she went through the services of the day. From
matins, which, at this period of the year, began at the cheerless hour
of four in the morning, till compline, at eight in the evening, when the
church bell tolled the end of another day of prayer, Laure’s nature was
under a kind of religious spell, which she and those about her had
joyfully interpreted as a true vocation.
The first eleven days of Laure’s convent life passed away in comparative
calmness; and she found no weariness in them. On the twelfth, Madame
Eleanore rode in from Le Crépuscule to see her daughter. She was
admitted to the convent as speedily as if the little lay sister had
known the devouring eagerness of the mother-heart; and because she was a
lady of consequence, and because she was known to be very generous to
the Church, and especially because the Bishop of St. Nazaire was her
close friend, she was not left to wait in the reception-room, but
conducted straight to the Prioress’ cell.
Mère Piteuse received Madame Eleanore with anxious cordiality. After
their greetings the guest seated herself, and was obliged to keep
silence for a moment before she could ask quietly,—
“And Laure, Reverend Mother,—how fares my child? Is she content with
you?” Eleanore’s heart throbbed with unconfessed hope as she asked this
question. For if Laure was _not_ content, she might return at will to
the Castle, her home, and her mother’s heart.
But the Prioress returned Eleanore’s look with a smile of satisfaction.
“In a moment Laure will come hither. I have sent for her. Then thou
shalt learn from her own lips how well her life goes. Never, I think,
hath our priory received a new daughter that showed herself so happy in
her vocation. We shall call her name Angelique at her consecration.”
Eleanore felt her body grow cold, and her head swim. Her face, however,
betrayed nothing. Her little girl, then, was really gone! Laure, the
wild bird, was tamable. She—_could_ she become “Angelique”?
Neither madame nor the Prioress spoke again till there was a sound of
gentle footsteps in the corridor, followed by a light tap on the wooden
door of the cell.
“Enter!” cried the Prioress; and Laure came quietly in.
First of all she bowed to Mère Piteuse. Then, as Eleanore involuntarily
held out her arms, the girl went into them, and kissed her mother with a
warmth and a sweetness that perhaps Eleanore had not known from her
before. At the same moment the Prioress rose quietly, and left the room.
The instant that she was gone, Eleanore seized the girl in a still
closer embrace, and held her tightly and more tightly to her breast.
“Laure, my darling! Laure, my sweet child! how hath my heart yearned for
thee! How hath thy name lain ever on my lips while I slept, and been
enshrined in my heart by day!”
The young girl’s arms wound themselves about her mother’s neck, and she
laid her head upon that shoulder where it had been wont to rest in her
babyhood. And Laure sighed a little, not unhappily, but like a child
tired of play.
“Laure, wilt thou remain here in the convent? Art thou happy? Dost thou
wish it, or wilt thou come home again to Crépuscule?”
A sudden image of the gray Castle, with its vast hall, and the great
fire blazing in the chimney-place within, and all the well-known figures
assembled there for a meal,—Alixe, Gerault, the demoiselles and young
squires headed by Courtoise, and the burly men-at-arms that had played
with her and carried her about as a little child,—all the long-familiar,
comfortable scenes of her old life came before the girl’s eye. And
then—then she drew a little breath and answered her mother, unfaltering:
“’Tis beautiful here, and sweet and holy withal. I am content, dear
mother. I will remain.”
“And hast thou, then, the vocation in thy heart, whereby some souls are
claimed of God from birth to death, and find the utmost of their
happiness in His communion?”
Laure’s great eyes fixed themselves upon the mother’s sad face as she
replied again, very softly: “Yea, my mother. That, from my heart, do I
believe.”
Eleanore sighed deeply, and then quickly smiled again. “Think not that I
mourn, my daughter, for having yielded thee up to the Church. May this
blessed spirit remain in thee, bringing thee everlasting peace.”
Then, while Laure still clung to her, the mother herself put the closely
clasped arms away from her neck, and drew the novice to her feet. “Now,
my Laure, I must go. But my thoughts are still left with thee.”
“But thou wilt come, mother?—In ten days’ time thou wilt come to me
again?”
“Yea, sith it is permitted by the rules that I see thee once more, I
will surely come,” she answered quietly.
“Laure will greatly rejoice at thy coming,” said the Prioress, gently,
from the doorway.
So Eleanore renewed her promise, and shortly after rode away from the
priory gate, into the thick wood through which ran the road to
Crépuscule.
Her mother’s visit brought Laure two days of extremest homesickness and
yearning. Then she regained her independence, and began to find a new
delight in her surroundings. The perfect peace of it, the infinite,
delightful detail of worship, with its multifarious candle-points, and
its continual clouds of fragrant incense, all wrought together into a
life of undeviating regularity, brought to the novice a sense of
peculiar safety and freedom from vexation or care that was quite new to
her, for all her youth. The day began with matins, repeated by each nun
alone in her cell. Laure had been given a room in a corner of the
priory, at the very end of the corridor of novices, and she gained
therefrom an added sense of exclusiveness and seclusion. She had not
once been late in her answer to the matins bell, and the mistress of
novices, passing Laure’s cell on her first round of the day, had never
failed to find her praying. Laure came of a pious house, and had known
her prayers, all the forms of them, long before she entered the priory.
They required no thought in the repetition, and therefore there was many
a morning when she played the parrot at her desk, either too sleepy, or
too much occupied with thoughts and dreams, to heed the familiar
addresses to God. This was not entirely a fault, perhaps. The mornings
came very early in these days, and there were wonderful things to be
seen through her cell-window. She saw the dawn, golden-girdled, garbed
in flowing rose-color, unlock the eastern portals of the sky. She saw
stars and moon glimmer faintly and more faint, and finally sink to rest
under the high, clear green of the morning heaven. Last of all, over the
feathery line of trees that made a horizon for her at her cell-window,
she could see the first dazzling ladder of the sun lifted up to lean
against the east. And then Laure would long for the murmur of devotion
to be stilled in the Abbey, for sun-mists were filling the Heavens, and
from the forest the bird-chorus rose to a full-throated _tutti_, in its
hymn of glorification to the new day.
This morning benediction that she found, Laure kept to herself by day,
and carried with her until dark. There was no one in the priory to whom
she could have confided her pleasure, for there was none in the Abbey
that had her love, or, indeed, any love at all, for the world that God
had made for Himself and for mankind. The day-tasks also had their
pleasures for the novice. She learned, in time, that she was not obliged
to fill her recreation hours with embroidery; but that she might sleep,
or pray, or work in the garden, or do whatever a quiet fancy should
select. So she chose to befriend the soil, and played with it as if it
were a tender companion. And after her exercise here, the rest of the
day, nones, vespers, supper, confession, and compline, melted away
almost unheeded, leaving her at last to the sweet-breathed night, and to
a sleep as dreamless and as sound as that of any baby.
In this most simple way, without any untoward happening, without her
once leaving the priory, the days flowed on, spring melted into summer,
and Laure found herself possessed of an infinite and ever-increasing
content, the great secret of which probably lay in the fact that every
waking hour had its occupation. She had entered her new life in the most
beautiful time of the year, and, heedless of this, began, in her
delusive happiness, to wonder why, long ago, the whole world had not
taken to such existence. She had plenty of time to indulge in
dreams,—vague and fragile dreams of the great world and the people
dwelling therein, that she should never come to know. But the fact that
she could never know them did not come home to her with the force of a
deprivation. She did not feel herself to be a hopeless prisoner. She was
not professed; and the fact that there still remained to her a free
choice easily kept her from any over-vivid perception of the eternal
dulness of convent life.
Once in two weeks Madame Eleanore came to see her, and if these visits
were bitter to the mother, Laure never guessed it. Also, from time to
time, the professed nuns would leave the convent for a day or two at a
time, on what errands the novices were not told. But Laure knew that
similar privileges would be hers after her profession.
The summer, in its fulness and beauty, passed away. Purple autumn came
and went. And one day, in the first cold weather, Laure was summoned to
the Mother-prioress’ room, where she was told a proud thing. It was
that, if she chose profession at the end of her novitiate, which would
come in the Christmas season, her consecration might take place at the
same time, by special permission from the highest power; for, by
ordinary ecclesiastic law, she was still many years too young for this
consummation of the celibate life. But if she so chose, his Grace the
Bishop of St. Nazaire would perform the ceremony of sanctification on
the twenty-sixth of December, directly after the forty-eight-hour vigil
of the birth of the Christ.
Laure heard this news with every appearance and every expression of
delight; and when she returned to the church for tierce and morning
mass, she tried, all through the service, to bring herself face to face
with herself, to appreciate, as she was conscious that she must, sooner
or later, the intense gravity of her position. But for some reason, by
some failure of concentrative force, she could not bring her mind to the
point of understanding. Over and over again her thoughts slid around
that one fact that she knew she must try to realize,—how, after the
giving of her final pledge, there could be no turning back, there could
be no escape, while she should live, from this life of prayer. She did
not appreciate it at all. She only remembered that she had been very
contented here, and that the days were never long.
In the weeks that followed her talk with Mère Piteuse, Laure enacted
this same scene of effort with herself many times, always futilely. As a
matter of fact, it was too grave a responsibility to put upon the
shoulders of a child in years and a less than child in experience. But
this unfairness was one of the prerogatives of monasticism,
unappreciated to this day.