she had seen him many times in life; yet he was dead: transparent and
pinched and ineffably still, and dead! The head was bare of any cap or
helmet, and the black locks and beard were smoothly combed. The broad,
fair brow was calm and unwrinkled. The mouth, scarce concealed by the
mustache, was curved into an expression of great peace.
Madame took the cover again, and drew it slowly down till the whole form
lay before her. His armor had been removed, and he was clothed in silken
vestments that hid all trace of his wound. The hands were folded fair
across his breast; his feet were cased in long velvet shoes,
fur-bordered. From the peacefulness of his attitude it was difficult to
imagine the scene by which he had met his end: the great flashing and
clashing of arms, the blare of trumpets, the shouting applause of
thousands of fair onlookers, gayly clothed ladies, who, after their
shouting, saw him fall.
Long Eleanore stood there, looking upon him as he lay, untroubled now by
any human thing. And as she looked, many world-thoughts rose up within
her as to his life, his griefs, and the manner of his going. She had had
him always: had borne, and reared, and watched, and loved him; and he
had loved her, she knew, though he had seldom shown it, and had lived
much within himself. She yearned—ah, _how_ she yearned!—to take him now
into her arms again, and croon over him, and soothe him, as a mother
soothes her children. Alas, that he did not need it of her! Her breast
heaved twice or thrice, with deep, suppressed sobs. Then she fell upon
her knees, and leaned her forehead over upon an edge of his robe while
she prayed. And as she knelt there, twilight gathered over the sunset
glow, and the chapel grew dim and gray with coming darkness.
After a long while madame rose and turned to Alixe, who stood near,
looking at her and weeping. And madame said gently: “Alixe, let her be
summoned—little Lenore—his wife. She should be here.”
Alixe bowed silently, and went away out of the room. Eleanore remained
in her place, and the demoiselles still knelt under the crucifix. Then
came footboys, with tapers, to light the candles. Presently the bier was
haloed with yellow flames, and the marble altar blazed with lights. The
hour for the mass was near, and the people of the Castle, and a few
country folk, clothed in their best, began to come softly into the
chapel, by twos and threes. All, after bowing to the cross and pausing
for a few seconds to look upon Gerault, passed over to the far side of
the room, and knelt there, absorbed in prayer. The little room was more
than half filled, when Courtoise, pale and wide-eyed, appeared upon the
threshold, and, holding up his hand, whispered to the throng,—
“Madame Lenore is here! Peace, and be still! Madame Lenore comes in!”
Immediately Lenore walked into the room, and men held their breath at
sight of her. She was dressed as for a bridal, in robes of stiff, white
damask, her mantle fastened at her throat with a silver pin, and her
silver-woven wedding-veil falling over her from the filet that confined
it. White as death itself she was, and staring straight before her,
seeing nothing of the throng of onlookers. For a moment her eyes were
blinded by the blaze of light. Then she started forward, to the body of
her lord.
When she entered, her two hands had been tightly clenched, and she had
thought to restrain herself from any outbreak of grief before the
people. But the living were forgotten now. Here before her was the face
that she had loved so wofully, that she had hungered for so unspeakably.
Here was he, the giver of her one brief hour of unutterable happiness;
the cause of so many days and nights of tremulous woe. Here he lay,
waiting not for her nor for anything, with no power to give her greeting
when she came. Yet it was he; it was his face.
“Gerault—Gerault—my lord!” she whispered softly, as if he slept:
“Gerault!” She was beside him, and had taken one of the rigid hands in
both her warm, living ones. “My lord, my beloved, wilt not turn thy face
to me? I have waited long for thy kiss. Prithee, give but a little of
thy love; _seem_ but to notice me, and I will be well content. Nay, but
thou surely wilt! Surely, surely, beloved, thou wilt not pass me by!”
She had been covering the hand she held with kisses, but now she put it
from her, and looked down upon the passive body, her eyes wide and hurt,
and her mouth tremulous with his repulse. The spectators watched this
pitiable scene with fascinated awe; and it seemed not to occur to one of
them to prevent what followed. None there realized that Lenore was
unbalanced: that to her, Gerault was still alive. She bent over, and put
her lips to his. Then, burned and tortured by the unresponsiveness of
the clay, she laid herself down upon the bier and put her head in the
hollow of Gerault’s neck, where it had been wont to rest.
Now, at last, two of that watching company started forward to prevent a
continuance of the scene. Courtoise and the Bishop went to her with one
impulse; took her—monseigneur by the hands, Courtoise about the body;
loosened her clasp upon the form of her dead husband, and drew her
gently away from the bier. She, spent and shaken with her grief, made no
resistance, but lay quietly back in their arms, trembling and weak.
Thereupon both men looked helplessly toward Madame Eleanore, to know
what should be done. She, strained almost to the point of breaking, came
and stood over the form of Lenore and said to Courtoise,—
[Illustration:
_“Gerault—Gerault—my
lord!” she whispered.—Page 275_
]
“She cannot remain here. ’Tis too terrible for her. Carry her up to her
room, whither Alixe shall follow her. But I must remain here till the
mass is said.”
Both of the men would gladly have acted upon this suggestion; but madame
had not finished speaking when Lenore began to struggle in their arms,
crying piteously the while:
“Nay! Let me stay! In the name of mercy, let me not be sent from him. I
will not seek again to disturb his rest. I will be very quiet—very
still. I will not even weep. I will but kneel here upon the stones, and
will not speak through all the mass, so that you take me not out of his
sight. Methinks he might care to have me here; it might be his wish that
I should remain unto the end. Have pity, gentle Courtoise! Pity,
monseigneur!”
At once they granted her request, and released her; for indeed her plea
was more than any of the three could well endure. The Bishop was beyond
speech, and the tears were streaming from Courtoise’s eyes as he left
her side. Lenore kept her word. She knelt down upon the stones, two or
three feet from the bier; and, with head bent low and hands clasped upon
her breast, strove to force her thoughts to God and high heaven. St.
Nazaire at once began the mass for the dead, and never had any man more
reverence done him or more tears shed for him than the stern and silent
Lord of Crépuscule, who, it seemed, had formed a light of life for
Lenore the golden-haired. After the beginning of the service, she was
left unnoticed where she had placed herself; and, as the minutes passed,
her strained figure settled nearer and nearer to the floor; the
candle-light played more joyously with her glorious hair; and finally,
as the mass neared its end, she sank quietly down upon the stones,
unconscious and released from tears at last.
A few moments later, Courtoise and Alixe bore her gently up the great
stairs, and laid her, in her white bridal robes, upon her lonely bed. It
was thus that she left Gerault; thus that her youth and her love met
their end, and her long twilight of widowhood began.
* * * * *
Another morning dawned, in tender primrose tints, and saluted the sea
through a low-clinging September haze. The Castle rose at the usual
hour, and dressed, and descended to the morning meal, scarce able to
understand that there was any change in the usual quiet existence. It
was impossible, indeed, to realize that, in two little days of sun and
storm, the life of the Castle had died, its mainstay had broken, and
that henceforth it must exist only in memories. On this day two of the
squires made their adieux to madame, and hied them forth to seek a lord
by whom to be trained yet more thoroughly for knighthood; and mayhap to
get themselves a little more familiar with its third article.[3] But
Courtoise, all heart-broken as he was, and Roland de St. Bertaux, and
Guy le Trouvé, being all of gentle blood, but without other home to
seek, came to their lady and kissed her hand, and swore her eternal
allegiance and service. And the demoiselles, who had, indeed, no need of
a lord in the Castle, renewed their duty to their mistress, and also
tried to give her what little comfort they knew, in the shape of certain
of Anselm’s Latin texts, and a few less pithy but warmer phrases of
their own making. The six knights that had brought Gerault home, rode
off again, sadly bearing with them Eleanore’s brave messages of loyalty
and thanks to Duke Jean in Rennes. The Bishop of St. Nazaire sent his
assistant priest home; but he himself elected to remain for a day or
two, knowing that, should Lenore become seriously ill, he would be a
stay for Madame Eleanore. Of Eleanore herself there were no fears. She
was too strong to cause any one anxiety for her health. Indeed, it was
generally thought that she had put Gerault too much away. How that may
be is not certain; but there was nothing now in the Castle to speak of
him. The chapel was empty; the mouth of the great vault had closed once
more, this time to hide under its grim weight the last of the line of
Crépuscule.
Footnote 3:
“He shall uphold the rights of the weaker, such as orphans, damsels,
and widows.”
On the second day after the funeral, Eleanore, knowing by bitter
experience how excellent a cure for melancholy is hard work, betook
herself and the demoiselles up to the spinning-room as usual. Lenore
only, of the company, was missing. She, by madame’s own bidding, still
kept her bed,—lying there silent, patient, asking no attendance from any
one; listening hour by hour to the soft sound of the sea as it broke
upon the cliffs far below her window. Of what was in her heart, what
things she saw in her day dreams, neither Alixe nor madame sought to
learn. But there was something in her face, thin, wan, transparent as it
had grown, that sent a great fear to Eleanore’s heart, and caused her to
watch over Lenore with deep anxiety; and it seemed as if the effort of
walking would break the last vestige of strength in that frail body.
Through the first day of return to the old routine, madame was fully
occupied in making a pretence at cheerfulness and in inducing those
around her to hide their sadness. But afterwards, when chatter and
smiles began to come naturally back to the young lips, and the gayety of
youth to shine from their eyes again, she suddenly relaxed her strain,
and let her mind sink into what depths it would. How dim with misery was
the September air! Hope had gone out of her life; and the thought of joy
was a mockery. Throughout her whole world there was not a single spot of
brightness on which to feast her tired eyes. Even imagination had fled,
and there remained to her only a vista of unending, monotonous days, the
one so like the other that she should soon forget the passage of time.
And this future was inevitable. Le Crépuscule was here, and she must
keep to it. She had no other refuge save a nunnery; and that merest
suggestion was terrible to her. Gerault’s widow, the young Lenore, was
left; yet she would be infinitely happier to go back to the home of her
youth. There was a cry of despair in Eleanore’s heart at this
realization, and she fought with herself for a long time before finally
she was wrought to the point of going to Lenore and counselling her
return to her father’s roof. Yet Eleanore brought herself to this; for
she felt that this last sacrifice was one of duty: that she had no right
forever to shut the youth and beauty of the young life into the grim
shadows of Le Crépuscule.
On the evening of the third day of her new struggle Eleanore went, with
woe in her heart, to the door of Lenore’s room. The apartment was
flooded with the light of sunset, so that Lenore, lying in the very
midst of it, seemed to be resting in a sea of glowing gold. When
Eleanore entered, the young girl turned, with a little smile of
pleasure, and said,—
“Thou’rt very kind to come to me here while I lie thus in idlesse.
Indeed, I see not how thou shouldst bear with me that I do nothing when
all the Castle is at work.”
“Bear with thee! My child, thou hast given us nothing to bear. Thou hast
rather brought into the Castle a light that will burn always in our
hearts. And, in thy great grief, thou shalt get what comfort may be for
thee from whatever thou canst find. Now, indeed, dear child, I am come
to make a pleading that breaketh my heart; yet we have done so much
wrong to thy fair young life, that it is not in me further to blight
it.” She went over to the bedside, and Lenore, sitting up, took one of
the strong white hands in her own delicate fingers and pressed it to her
lips. Then, while Eleanore bent close over her, she said softly,—
“What is this thing that pains thee? Surely thou’lt not think that I
could do aught to hurt thee?”
“Yes, for this will bring happiness back into thy heart.”
“Happiness!”
“Yes, Lenore, happiness. That word sounds strange in thine ears from me;
yet listen while I speak. Gerault, my dead son, brought thee out of a
life of sunshine and gayety and fair youth into this grim Twilight
Castle; and now thou hast entered, with all of us, from twilight into
blackest night. But thou hast in thee what is lacking in me, and in
those that dwell here as part of our race; thou’rt young, and thou hast
had a joyous youth. Thou knowest what I long since forgot: that, in this
world, there is a country of happiness. Now it is I, Gerault’s mother,
that bids thee leave these shades of ours and return to thy real home. I
bid thee go back again into thy youth, to thy father’s house, whither,
if thou wilt, I will myself in all love convey thee; and I will tell thy
father how thou hast been unto me all that—more than—a daughter should
be; that I love thee as one of my own blood; that I am sore to give thee
up—”
“Madame! Madame Eleanore! Thou must not give me up! Surely thou wilt
not!” Lenore turned a quivering face up to the other; and madame read
her expression with deep amazement.
“Give thee up! Do I not tell thee that at the thought my heart is like
to break? Nay, thou’rt my daughter always; and when thou wilt, this is
thy home. Yet for the sake of thy youth—”
“Madame—” Lenore sat up straighter, and looked suddenly off to the
windows of her room, her face by turns gone deathly white and rosy red:
“madame, this Twilight Castle is my double home. Here dwelt Gerault, my
beloved lord, and—and here shall dwell his child—the child that is to be
born to me—the new Lord of Le Crépuscule.”
“Lenore!—Lenore!”
“My mother!”
Then, as the sunset died from the distant west, these two women, united
as never before, sat together upon Gerault’s bed, clasping each other
close and mingling their tears and their laughter in a joy that neither
had thought to know again.
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER ELEVEN_
THE WANDERER
[Illustration]
The utterly unexpected revelation that Lenore had made to madame drew
the two women into a tender intimacy that brought a holy joy to both of
them. That most beautiful, most priceless flowering of Lenore’s life
gave to her nature an added sweetness, and to her soul a new depth that
rendered her incomparably beautiful in the eyes of every one around her.
The secret remained a secret between her and her new-made mother, and
for this reason the happiness of the two was as inexplicable as it was
joyous for the rest of the Castle. Alixe, standing jealously without the
gate of this golden citadel, into which she had frequent glimpses,
wondered at its brightness as much as she wondered at its existence at
all. Day by day Lenore grew beautiful, and day by day the look of
content upon her face became more marked, until it was marvelled at how
she had forgotten her bereavement. And Eleanore—Madame Eleanore—found
herself growing young again in the youth of Gerault’s bride; and in her
love for the beautiful, tranquil girl she learned a lesson in patience
that fifty years of trial and sorrow had never brought her.
When Lenore finally rose from her bed she did not return to the mornings
in the spinning-room; and, since madame must perforce be there to
oversee the work, Alixe took her frame or her wheel to Lenore’s chamber,
and sat there through the morning hours. Save for the fact that Alixe
could not be addressed on the subject nearest her heart, Lenore probably
enjoyed these periods of the younger woman’s company quite as much as
those graver times with madame. Both of them were young, and Alixe,
having a nature the individuality of which nothing could suppress, knew
more of the gayeties of youth than one could have thought possible,
considering her opportunities. This jumped well with Lenore’s
disposition, for her own sunny nature would have shone through any
cloud-thickness, provided there was some one to catch the beam and
reflect it back to her. The two talked on every conceivable subject, but
generally reverted to one common interest before many hours had gone.
This was Nature: of which Lenore had been vaguely, but none the less
passionately fond; and of which Alixe, in her lonely life, had made a
beautiful and minute study. The two of them together watched the death
of the summer, and saw autumn weave its full woof, from the rich colors
of golden harvest and purple vine to the melancholy brown and gray of
dead moorland and leafless branch. And when the dreariness of November
came upon the land, there remained, to their keen eyes, the sea—the sea
that is never twice the same—the sea whose beauties cannot die.
This sea, which Lenore had never looked on till she came a bride to
Crépuscule, held for her a deep fascination. She watched it as an
astronomer watches his stars. And its vasty, changing surface came to
exercise a peculiar influence over her quiet life. The night of the
great storm brought it into double conjunction with the bitterest grief
in her life; and, with the knowledge of its cruel power, awe was added
to her interest and her admiration. She and Alixe were accustomed to
talk daily of the lost Lenore, Lenore herself always introducing the
topic with irresistible eagerness, and Alixe answering her innumerable
questions with an interest born of curiosity regarding the young widow’s
motive. In the presence of Alixe, Lenore never betrayed the tiniest
tremor of sensitiveness; and it would have been impossible for Alixe to
surmise how keen was the secret bitterness that lay hidden in her heart.
What suffering it brought she endured alone, by night, and indeed she
kept herself for the most part well shielded from it.
From the first night after Gerault’s burial, Lenore had insisted upon
sleeping alone. To every suggestion of company she replied that solitude
was precious to her, and that she could not sleep with another in the
room. Eleanore understood her feeling, and, while she left an easy
access from her room to Lenore’s, never once ventured to enter Lenore’s
chamber after nightfall. For this, indeed, the young woman was grateful,
not because of any joy she found in being alone in the darkness, but
because, after she had gone to bed, she felt that her veil of
appearances had fallen, and that she might let her mind take what temper
it would. It was by night that she knew the terrible yearning for the
dead that all women have in time, and from which they suffer keenest
agony. It was by night that she pictured Gerault not as he had been, but
as she had wished him to be toward her; and gradually Gerault dead came
to be vested with every perfect quality, till her loss became endurable
to her through the hours of her dreaming. By night, also, her childhood
returned to her; and she recalled and gently regretted all the simple
pleasures she had known, the rides and games and caroles that she had
been wont to indulge in, in her father’s house. Sometimes, too, in hours
of distorted vision, she came to feel that her great blessing was rather
a burden; and she would weep at the thought of the little thing that
must be born to the interminable shadows of this grim Castle, and felt
that she alone would be responsible for the sadness of the young life.
Yet there might be fair things devised for him. It could not be but a
boy,—her child; and in his early youth she planned that he should ride
to some distant, gay chateau, to be esquired to a gallant knight; and in
time he should come riding home to her, himself golden-spurred; and
then, later, he should bring a lady to the Castle whom he should love as
a man loves once; and the two of them would bring the light of the sun
to Crépuscule, and banish its shadows forever away. So dreamed Lenore
for this unborn babe of hers.
And then again, sometimes, by night, she would leave her bed and sit for
hours together at that window where, long ago, Gerault had knelt in the
hour of his passion. And Lenore would watch the quiet moon sail serenely
through the sky, till it sank, at early dawn, under the other sea. And
this vision of the setting moon never failed to bring peace to her
heart. Sometimes, after Gerault’s example, but not in his tone, she
would call down from her height upon the spirit of the lost Lenore that
was supposed to walk the rocky shore at the base of the Castle cliff.
But no answering cry ever reached her ears, and this was well; for what
such a thing would have brought to her already morbid mind, it were sad
to surmise. Nevertheless, in the nights thus spent, this gentle ghost
came to have a personality for her, in which she rather rejoiced, for
she felt that here must be some one in whom she could expect
understanding of her secret grief. Lenore at night, living with the
creatures of her fancy, was a strange little being, no more resembling
the Lenore of daylight than a gnome resembles some bright fairy. And so
well did she hide her midnight moods that no one in the Castle ever so
much as suspected them.
It was not till the middle of November that Alixe learned of the hope of
Crépuscule; but when she did know, her tenderness for Lenore became
something beautiful to see, and she partook both of Eleanore’s deep joy
and of Lenore’s quiet content. Three or four days after the knowledge
had come to her, Alixe was pacing up and down the terrace in front of
the Castle, side by side with Lenore. It was a blustering, chilly day,
and both young women drew their heavy mantles close around them as they
watched the great flocks of gulls wheel and dip to the sea, looking like
flurries of snowflakes against the sombre background of the sky. Far out
in the bay one or two of the crude fishing-boats from St. Nazaire were
beating their way southward toward their harbor, and then Lenore watched
with eyes that dilated more and more with interest and desire.
“Alixe,” she said suddenly, “canst thou sail a boat?”
“Why dost thou ask?”
“Certes, for that I would know.”
Alixe laughed. “’Tis a reason,” she said.
“Tell me, Alixe! Make me answer!”
“Knowest thou not that, after the drowning of the demoiselle Lenore, it
was forbidden any one in Crépuscule to put out upon the sea in any boat,
though he might be able to walk the water like Our Lord?”
“Hush, Alixe! But yet—thou’st not replied to me.”
“Well, then, if thou wouldst know, I can sail a boat, and withal
skilfully. In the olden days, Laure—’twas Gerault’s sister—and I have
gone out in secret an hundred times in a fisherman’s boat anchored a
mile down the shore, in front of some of the peasants’ huts. Laure and I
paid the fisherman money to let us take the boat; for she loved it as
well as I. Indeed, I have been lonely for it since her going.”
“Ah! Since her going thou’st not known the sea?”
“Not often. Alone, with a heavy boat, there is danger.”
“Alixe, take me with thee sometime! Soon! To-day! My soul is athirst to
feel the tremor of the boiling waves!”
“Madame!” murmured Alixe, not relishing what she considered an
ill-advised jest.
“Nay! Look not like that upon me! I would truly go. Can we not set
forth? There is yet time ere dark.”