that I have used her ill, save as I could not bring myself falsely to
act the ardent lover. If she hath been unhappy, then am I greatly
grieved. Yet what hath she not that women do desire in life? What lacks
there of honor or of pleasure in her estate? Moreover, if she has lost
her own mother, hath she not gained thee, dear lady of mine? Mon Dieu,
madame,—think not so ill of me. I swear that for me she yearns not at
all. Even this afternoon, when all of you had departed from the long
room, she did implore me, with sincerest speech, that I depart at early
date for Rennes. How likes you that? And moreover, to all my
questioning, she did stoutly deny that my going would be for aught but
her own pleasure, and would in no way grieve her heart.” And Gerault
stared upon his mother with the assured and exasperated look of a doubly
injured man.
Madame Eleanore drew herself together and set her lips in the firm
resolve still to treat her son with consideration. When she began to
speak, her manner was calm and her voice low and quiet; yet in her eyes
there gleamed a fire that was not born of patience. “So, Gerault!
Doubtless all thou sayest is sooth to thee; yet I would tell thee this:
when thou left’st her alone, I came upon her still sitting in the long
room, leaning her head upon the table where thou hadst sat, weeping as
if her heart was like to break. And when her sobs were still I brought
her up to her room and caused her to remove her garments and to seek her
bed, though all the while she shook with inward grief, till Alixe
brought her a posset, and bathed her head in elder-flower water, and
then, at last, she slept.”
“And gave she no name to thee as cause for her malady?”
“Art thou indeed so ignorant of us? Or is it heartlessness? Wilt thou go
to Rennes?”
“Hath she not required me to go? Good Heavens, madame! what wouldst have
me do?” he answered with weary impatience.
“Gerault, Gerault, if I could by prayer or anger make thee to understand
for one instant only! Ah, ’tis the same tale that every woman has to
tell. It was so with me. In my early youth I was brought from bright
Laval, where I was a queen of gayety and life, to rule alone over this
great Twilight Castle. Thy grandam was dead; and there was no other
woman of my station here. In a few months after my home-coming as a
bride, thy father rode away to join the army of Montfort in the East.
From that time I saw my lord but a few weeks in every year; for the war
lasted till I had reached the age of four-and-thirty. Thou camest to
cheer my loneliness; and then, long after, Laure. And at last, when
Laure was in her first babyhood, seventeen years agone, the long
struggle ended at Auray; and then my lord, sore wounded in his last
fight, came home. Alas! I was no happier for his coming. He had suffered
much, and he was no longer young. We two, so long separated, were almost
as strangers one to the other. Thou wast his great pride; dost remember
how he loved to have thee near him? And many a time it cut me to the
heart to hear the bloody, valorous tales he poured into thine ears; for
I knew by them that he meant thee to do what he had done. It was not
till he lay in his mortal sickness that we came back one to the other;
but he died in my arms, whispering to me such words as I had never had
from him before. That last is a sweet memory, Gerault; but the tale is
none the less grievous of my young life here. And there is the more pity
of it that mine is not the only story of such things. Many and many is
the weary life led by some high-born lady in her castle, while her lord
fights or jousts or drinks his life out in his own selfishness. Through
those long years of the war of the Three Jeannes, I suffered not alone
of women; and how I suffered, thou canst never know. Do thou not
likewise with thy frail Lenore. Stay with her here a little while, and
make her life what it might be made with love.”
Gerault listened in non-committal silence. When she finished he turned
and faced her squarely: “Hast made this prate of my father and thee to
Lenore?” he asked severely.
“Gerault!” The exclamation escaped involuntarily; when it was out
Eleanore bit her lip and drew herself up haughtily. “Thou’rt insolent,”
she said in a tone that she would have used to an inferior.
In that moment her son found something in her to admire, but the man and
master in him was all alive. “Madame, we will waste no further words. I
crave the honor to wish you a good-night.” And with a profound and
ironical bow, he turned from the room, leaving Eleanore alone to the
darkness, and to what was a defeat as bitter as any she had ever known.
Through the watches of the night this woman did not pray, but sat and
meditated on the immense question that she had herself raised, and to
which she had not the courage to give the true answer. Through her
nearest and dearest she had learned the natures of men, knew full well
their only aims and interest: prowess in arms, hunting, hawking,
drinking, and, when they were weary, dalliance with their women. But was
this _all_? Was this all there was for any woman in the mind of the man
that loved her? The idea of rebellion against the scorn of men was not
at all in her mind. She only wondered sadly how she and others of her
sex came to be born so keenly sentient, so open to heart-wounds as they
were. And she divined that her question burned no less in the brain of
the young Lenore than in her own, though neither of them ever spoke of
it together. Nor did either make any roundabout inquiries as to
Gerault’s intentions with regard to Rennes. Not so, however, the
demoiselles of the Castle. Courtoise was under a hot fire of inquisition
throughout most of the following two days; but for once he himself was
uncertain of his lord’s move, and presently there was a little air of
joy creeping over the place in the shape of a hope that the Seigneur was
going to remain in Crépuscule. This, indeed, was the secret idea of
Courtoise; and only David the dwarf refused to entertain a suspicion
that Gerault would not ride to Rennes for the tourney.
David judged well; for Gerault went to Rennes. Lenore knew on the tenth
of the month that he would go. Madame remained in doubt till the day
before the departure.
On the morning of the twelfth the whole Castle was astir by dawn.
Gerault and his squire, bravely arrayed, came into the great hall at
five o’clock, and sat down to their early meal. On the right hand of the
Seigneur was Lenore, not eating, only looking about her on the fresh
morning light, and again into Gerault’s face. She was not under any
stress of emotion. She was, rather, very dull and heavy-eyed. Yet down
in her heart lay a smothered pain that she felt must come forth before
long, in what form she could not tell. She and Gerault did not talk much
together. There was a little strain between them that was none the less
certain because it was indefinable, and it was a relief to the young
wife when madame finally appeared. Lenore saw Eleanore’s face with
something of surprise. Never had it been so cold, so expressionless, so
like a piece of chiselled marble; and looking upon her son, it grew yet
harder, yet colder. But when madame, after some little parley with
Courtoise, turned finally to Lenore, the child-wife found something in
that face that came dangerously near to melting her apathy, and freeing
the flood of grief that lay deep in her heart.
Half an hour later the knight and his squire were in the courtyard,
where their horses stood ready for the mount. The little company of the
Castle gathered close about their master, watching him as they might
have watched some mythical god. Indeed, he was a brave sight, as he
stood there in the early sunshine, flashing with armor, a gray plume
floating from his helmet, and one of Lenore’s small gloves fastened over
his visor as a gage. Lenore beheld this with infinite, gentle pride, as
she stood fixing his great lance in its socket. Presently two of the
squires helped him to mount to the saddle; and when he was seated, he
lifted Lenore up to him to give her good-bye. A few tears ran from her
eyes, and rolled silently down his breastplate, on which they gleamed
like clustered diamonds. But Lenore wiped them away with her hair, that
they might not tarnish the metal of his trappings; and by that act,
perhaps, Gerault lost a blessing.
The last kiss that he gave her was a long one, and his last words almost
tender. Then, putting her to the ground again, he saluted his mother,
though her coldness struck him to the heart; and, after a final farewell
to the assembled company, he turned and gave the sign of departure to
Courtoise.
Spur struck flank. At the same instant, the two horses darted forward to
the drawbridge, across which they had presently clattered. Alixe, who
had been a silent spectator of the scene of departure, was standing near
Lenore; and now she leaned over and would have whispered in the young
wife’s ear; but Lenore could not have heard her had she spoken. The
child stood like a statue, blind to everything save to the blaze of
passing armor, deaf to all but the echo of flying hoofs. Here she stood,
in the centre of the courtyard, alone with her strange little life,
watching the swift-running steed carry from her all her power of joy.
With straining eyes she saw the two figures disappear down the long,
winding hill; and when they had gone, and only a lazily rising
dust-cloud remained to mark their path, she stayed there still. But
presently Eleanore came to her side and took her cold hand in a hot
pressure. And then, as the two bereft women looked into each other’s
eyes, the frozen grief melted at last, and the flood burst upon them in
all its overwhelming fury.
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER NINE_
THE STORM
[Illustration]
For ten days after Gerault’s departure, Lenore led a disastrous mental
existence, which she expressed neither by words nor by deeds. In that
time no one in the Castle knew how she was rent and torn with anguish,
with yearning that had never been satisfied, and with useless regret for
a bygone happiness that had not been happy. The silent progress of her
grief led her into dark valleys of despair; yet none dreamed in what
depths she wandered. She, the woman chaste and pure, dared not try to
comprehend all that went on within her. She dared not picture to herself
what it was she really longed for so bitterly. The cataclysms that rent
her mind in twain were unholy things, and, had she been normal, she
might have refused to acknowledge them. The changes in her life had come
upon her with such overwhelming swiftness that she had hitherto had no
time for analysis; and now that she found herself with a long leisure in
which to think, the chaos of her mind seemed hopeless; she despaired of
coming again into understanding with herself.
During all these days Madame Eleanore watched her closely, but to little
purpose. The calm outward demeanor of the young woman baffled every
suspicion of her inward state. Day after day Lenore sat at work in the
whirring, noisy spinning-room, toiling upon her tapestry with a
diligence and a persistent silence that defied encroachment. Hour after
hour her eyes would rest upon the dim, blue sea; for that sea was the
only thing that seemed to possess the power of stilling her inward
rebellion. Forgetting how the winds could sometimes drive its sparkling
surface into a furious stretch of tumbling waters, she dreamed of making
her own spirit as placid and as quiet as the ocean. The thought was
inarticulate; but it grew, even in the midst of her inward tumult, till
in the end it brought her something of the quiet she so sorely needed.
By day and by night, through every hour, in every place, the figure of
her husband was always before her. How unspeakably she wanted him, she
herself could not have put into words. She knew well that he had
promised to come back—“soon.” But when every hour is replete with hidden
anguish, can a day be short? Can ten days be less than an eternity? a
possible month of delay less than unutterable?
One little oasis Lenore found for herself in this waste of time. Every
day she had been accustomed to pray upon her rosary, which was composed
of sixty-two white beads. Now, when she had said her morning prayer, she
tied a little red string above the first bead. On the second morning it
was moved up over the second bead; and so the sacred chain became a
still more sacred calendar. How many times did she halt in her prayers
to find the thirtieth bead! and how her heart sank when she saw it still
so very far from the little line of red!
At the end of the first week of the Seigneur’s absence, it came to
Madame Eleanore with a start that Lenore was growing paler and more wan.
Then a suspicion of what the young wife was suffering came to the older
woman, and she racked her brains to think of possible diversions for the
forlorn girl. A hawking party was arranged, which Madame Eleanore
herself led, on her good gray horse. And in this every one discovered
with some surprise that Lenore could sit a horse as easily as the young
squires, and that she managed her bird as well as any man. Alixe, who
had always been the one woman in the Castle to make a practice of riding
after the dogs, or with hawk on wrist, was filled with delight to find
this unexpected companion for her sports; and she decided that
henceforth Lenore should take the place of her old companion, Laure, in
her life.
The hawking party accomplished part of its purpose, at least; for Lenore
returned from the ride with some color in her face and a sparkle in her
eyes. She was obliged, however, to take to her bed shortly after
reaching the Castle, prostrated by a fatigue that was not natural.
Madame hovered over her anxiously all through the night, though she
slept more than in any night of late, and rose next morning at the usual
hour, much refreshed. That afternoon, when the work was through, madame
saw no harm in her riding out with Alixe for an hour, to give a lesson
to two young _mués_ that were jessed and belled for the first time. And
during this ride the young women made great strides in companionship.
What with new interest in an old pastime thus awakened, and a subject of
common delight between her and Alixe, Lenore found the next nine days
pass more quickly than the first. On the morning of the thirty-first of
the month, however, Lenore had a serious fainting-spell in the
spinning-room. She had been at work at her frame for an hour or more,
when suddenly it seemed to her that a steel had pierced her heart, and
she fell backward in her chair with a cry. The women hurried to her, and
after some moments of chafing her hands and temples, and forcing
cordials down her throat, she was brought back to consciousness. Her
first words were: “Gerault! Gerault!” and then in a still fainter voice:
“Save him, Courtoise! He falls!”
Thinking her out of her mind, madame carried her to her bedroom, and,
admitting only Alixe with her, quickly undressed the slender body, and
laid Lenore in the great bed. Presently she opened her blue eyes, and,
looking up into madame’s face, said, in a voice shaking with weakness,—
“It was a dream—a vision—a terrible vision! I saw Gerault—_killed_! My
God!” she put her hands to the sides of her head, in the attitude that a
terrified woman will take. “I saw him— Ah! But it is gone, now. It is
gone. Tell me ’twas a dream!”
Madame and Alixe soothed her, smoothing the hair back from her brow,
patting her hands, and giving her all the comfort that they knew.
Presently Lenore was calm again, and asked to rise. Madame, however,
forbade this, insisting that she should keep to her bed all day; and
through the afternoon either she or Alixe remained in the room, sewing,
and talking fitfully with Lenore. The young wife, however, seemed
inclined to silence. A shadow of melancholy had stolen upon her, and
there was a cold clutch at her heart that she did not understand.
Eleanore had her own theory in regard to the illness, and Alixe,
whatever she might have noticed, had nothing to say about it.
Next morning, the morning of the first of September, Lenore rose to go
about her usual tasks, seeming no worse for the attack of the day
before, except that her melancholy continued. Work in the spinning-room
that day, however, was cut short on account of the heat, which was more
oppressive than it had been at any time during the summer. Though the
sky was clear and the sun red and luminous, the air was heavy with
moisture; the birds flew close to the ground; spiders were busy spinning
heavy webs; worms and insects sought the underside of leaves; and all
things pointed to a coming storm. At noon two mendicant monks came to
the Castle, asking dinner as alms; and when the meal was over, they did
not proceed upon their way. The bright blue of the sky was beginning to
be obscured by fragments of gathering cloud, and in the infinite
distance could be heard low and portentous murmurs. The sense of
oppression and of apprehension that comes with the approach of any
disturbance of nature was strong in the Castle. At four in the
afternoon, madame had prayers said in the chapel, and there was a short
mass for safety during the coming storm. After this service, Lenore,
with Alixe and Roland de Bertaux, went out to walk upon the terrace that
overlooked the water. The sight before them was impressive. The whole
sea, from shore to far horizon, lay gray and glassy, flattened by the
weight of air that overhung it, heavy and hot with moisture. The sun was
gone, and the heart of the sky palpitated with purple. Flocks of gulls
wheeled round the Castle towers, screaming, now and then, with some
uneasy dread for their safety. The air grew more and more heavy, till
one was obliged to breathe in gasps, and the sweat ran down the body
like rain. The moments grew longer and quieter. The whole world seemed
to stop moving; and the birds, veering along the cliffs, moved not a
feather of their wings.
After that it came. The sky, from zenith to water-line, was cut with a
lightning sword, that hissed through the water-logged gray like molten
gold. Then followed the cry of pain from the wound,—such a roar as might
have come from the throats of all the hell-hounds at once. There was a
quick second crash, while at the same instant a fire-ball dropped from
heaven into the ocean, curdling the waters where it fell. Then, fury on
fury, came the storm,—wind and rain and fiercer flashes, the line of the
shower on the sea chased eastward by a toppling mass of rushing foam.
With a scream the flock of gulls dashed out into the mist to meet it,
and were seen no more; for now the world was black, and everything out
of shelter was in a whirling chaos of spray and rain.
Inside the Castle holy candles had been lighted in every room, and
beside them were placed manchets of blessed bread, considered to be of
great efficacy in warding off lightning-strokes. The two monks,
sincerely grateful for their shelter from this outburst, knelt together
in the chapel, and called down upon themselves the frightened blessings
of the company by praying incessantly, though their voices were
inaudible in the tumult of the storm. The wind shrieked around the
Castle towers. Flashes of white light, instantly followed by long rolls
of thunder, succeeded each other with startling rapidity. And, as a
fierce, indeterminate undertone to all other sounds, came the roaring of
the sea, which an incoming tide was bringing every minute higher and
closer around the base of the cliff below.
An hour went by, and yet another, and instead of diminishing in fury,
the wind seemed only to increase. None in the Castle, not madame
herself, could remember a summer storm of such duration. Every momentary
lull brought after it a still more violent attack, and the longer it
lasted, the greater grew the nervousness of the Castle inmates; for to
them this meant the anger of God for the sins of His children. The
evening meal was eaten amid repeated prayers for mercy and protection;
and shortly thereafter, the little company dispersed and crept away to
bed,—not because of any hope of sleep, but because there would be a
certain comfort in crouching down in a warm shelter and drawing the
blankets close overhead. The demoiselles, for the most part, and
possibly the squires too, huddled two or three in a room. The monks were
lodged together in the servants’ quarters; and of all that castleful,
only the women for whom it was kept were unafraid to be alone. Eleanore,
Lenore, and Alixe sought each her bed; but of them madame only closed
her eyes in sleep.
Lenore found herself terribly restless; and the foreboding in her mind
seemed not all the effect of the storm. Her thoughts moved through
terrifying shadows. It seemed to her that some great, unknown evil hung
over her; but her apprehension was as elusive as it was unreasonable.
For some hours she forced herself to keep in bed, tossing and twisting
about, but letting no sound escape her. It seemed at last as if the fury
of the wind had diminished, though the lightning-flashes continued
incessantly, and the whole sky was still alive with muttering thunder. A
little after midnight, urged by a restlessness that she was powerless to
control, Lenore rose, threw a loose bliault around her, took down the
iron lantern that hung, dimly burning, on a hook in a corner of the
room, and, lighting her way with this, went out into the silent upper
hall of the Castle.
Gray and ghostly enough everything looked, in the dim, flickering
lantern-light. There was in the air a smell of pitchy smoke from
burnt-out torches, and it seemed to Lenore as if spirits were passing
through this mist. Yet she felt no fear of anything in the spirit world.
Her heart was full of something else,—a vague, indefinable, more
terrible dread, an oppression that she could not reason away. Clad in
her voluminous purple mantle, with her hair unbound and flowing over her
shoulders, where it sparkled faintly in the lantern-light, she went down
the stairs, across the shadowy, pillared spaces of the great lower hall,
and so into the long room where Gerault had sat on the day when the
herald had come to call him to Rennes. She had a vision of him sitting
there at the table, bent upon his manuscript philosophy, never looking
up, as again and again she passed the door. It was a ghostly hour for
her to be abroad and occupied in such a way; yet she had no thought of
present danger. A useless sob choked her as she turned away from this
place of sorrowful memories and went to the chapel. Here half a dozen
candles on the altar were still burning to the god of the storm; and
Lenore, finding comfort in the sight of the cross, knelt before it and
offered up a prayer for peace of mind. Then, rising, she moved back
again into the hall; and, dreading to return to her lonely room, where
the roar of waves and the soughing of the wind round the towers made a
din too great for sleep, she sat down on a bench that stood beside a
pillar directly opposite the great, locked door. Sitting here, her
lantern at her feet, elbow on knee, chin on hand, she fell into a
strange reverie. The bitterest of all memories came back to her without
bitterness; and she tried to picture to herself that woman of Gerault’s
secret heart. What had she been? How had she died? Or was she dead? In
what relation had she really stood to Gerault? Was she that cousin of
Laval—or some other? These thoughts, which, always before, Lenore had
refused to work into definite shape, came to her now and were not
repelled. Her musing was deepest when, suddenly, she was startled by the
sound of light footsteps in the hall above. Some one came to the
staircase; some one came gliding sinuously down. Lenore half rose, and
looked up, cold with fear. Then she saw that it was Alixe, and,
strangely enough, her fear did not lessen; for never had she seen Alixe
like this.