Lenore, right willingly, hadst thou need of it, I would yield up my life
to you; but venture forth with you upon those waters will I not; nor
thou nor any other that were not mad, would ask it.”
Lenore frowned at these words, but she said nothing more, either on that
subject or another; and presently the two went back into the Castle. But
a strange desire had been born in Lenore, and she brooded upon it
continually. Day by day she hungered for the sea; and, though she did
not again suggest her wish, there were times when the roar of the waves
on the cliffs, and the cold puffs of air strong with the odor of the
salt tide, came near unbalancing her mind, and drove uncanny thoughts of
watery deaths through her heart. But through that long winter she
betrayed only occasional evidences of the effect that illness,
loneliness, and long brooding were having upon her mind; and perhaps it
was only the dread of betrayal that in the end saved her from actual
insanity.
December came in and advanced in the midst of arctic gales and
continually swirling snow, till Brittany was wrapped deep under a pure,
fleecy blanket. It was the season of warmth and idleness indoors, when
the poorest peasant got out his chestnut-bag, and merrily roasted this
staple article of his diet before the fire by night. The Christmas
spirit was on all men; and this in Brittany was tempered and tinctured
with the quaintest fairy-lore relating to the season, and as real to
every Breton as the story of their Christ. The Christmas mass was no
more devoutly enjoyed than was the great feast, held a week later, on
the night known throughout Brittany not as the New Year, but as St.
Sylvester’s Eve, when all elfdom was abroad to guard the treasures left
uncovered by the thirsty dolmens. And this, and an infinite number of
other tales, of witch and gnome, sprite and fay, sleeping princess and
hero-king, of Viviane and her wondrous forest of Broecilande, were told
anew, each year, behind locked doors, before the crackling fires that
burned from dusk to enchanted midnight.
To Lenore, the holy week from Christmas to New Year’s was replete with
interest; for in her own home, near Rennes, she had known nothing like
it. Christmas morning saw all the peasantry of the estates of Crépuscule
come to the Castle for mass; after which there was a great distribution
of alms.
From Christmas Day, throughout that week, according to ecclesiastic law,
the Castle drawbridge was never raised; no watchers were posted on the
battlements, and monk and knight, outlaw and criminal, high lord and
lady, found welcome and food and shelter within the great gray walls.
This open hospitality was made safe by the fact that, during this time,
no matter what war might be in progress, or what family feud in height,
no man was allowed to lift a hand against his neighbor, and the knight
that dared to use his sword during those seven days was branded caitiff
throughout his life. This law prevailed throughout the length and
breadth of France; but its observance belonged more peculiarly to the
far coast regions, where towns were scarce, and feudal fortresses
offered the only hope of shelter to the traveller. And during this week
there was scarcely an hour in the day that did not see its wanderer, of
whatever degree, appealing for safe housing from the bitter cold.
The week was the merriest and the busiest that Lenore had known since
coming to the Castle; and the arrival of the Bishop of St. Nazaire, on
the day before New Year’s, brought all Le Crépuscule to the highest
state of satisfaction. For many years it had been monseigneur’s custom
to spend St. Sylvester’s Day in the Castle,—formerly as the guest of the
old Seigneur, latterly as that of Madame Eleanore; and though the
Twilight Castle always delighted to honor his coming, on such occasions
it was a double pleasure; for upon this one day he carried with him a
spirit of bonhomie, of general, rollicking gayety, that roused every one
to the same pitch of happiness, and made the Saint’s feast what it was.
Since the last home-coming of Gerault, St. Nazaire had spent a good deal
of time at the Castle, had played many a well-fought game of chess with
Madame Eleanore, and had exerted himself to lift little Lenore, for whom
he entertained almost a veneration, out of her quiet melancholy. None in
the Castle, from Alixe to the scullions, but would have done him any
service; and his arrival assured the feast of something of its one-time
merriment.
On this great day the time for midday meat was set forward two hours, it
being just one o’clock when the company sat down at the immense
horseshoe table, that nearly encircled the great hall; for the ordinary
Castle retinue was increased by a rabble of peasants, and a dozen or
more of travellers that had claimed their privilege of hospitality.
As Madame Eleanore, handed by the Bishop, took her place at the head of
the table, the band of musicians in the stone gallery overhead sent out
a noisy blast of trumpets, and everybody sought a place. Beside madame,
supported by Courtoise, came Lenore; and again by her were Alixe, with
Anselm the steward. When these were all standing behind their tabourets,
monseigneur repeated the grace, in Latin. Immediately upon the amen, the
trumpets rang out again, and there was a great rustling as everybody sat
down and, in the same breath, began to talk. After a wait of not less
than ten seconds, there appeared four pages, bearing high in their hands
four huge platters, on each of which reposed a stuffed boar’s head,
steaming fragrantly. Two more boys followed these first, carrying
immense baskets of bread,—white to go above the salt, black for those
below. Then came Grichot, the cellarer, rolling into the room a cask of
beer, which was set up in the space between the two ends of the curved
table, and tapped. Instantly this was surrounded by a throng of
struggling henchmen, friars, and peasants, each with his horn in his
hand, eager to be among the first to drink allegiance to their lady.
Madame and her little party in the centre of the table were served with
wine of every description known to the north; besides mead or punches
for whosoever should call for them.
Lenore was seated between Courtoise and monseigneur; and for her alone
of all the company, apparently, the feast held less of merriment than of
sadness. When every one was seated, and the clatter of tongues had
begun, she looked about her, vaguely wondering how many times she
should, by this feast, measure a year passed in the grim Castle. Looking
along the table either way, at the double rows of men and women, Lenore
saw every mouth working greedily upon food already served, and every
hand outstretched for more, as rapidly as the various dishes could be
brought in. She saw burly men, roaring with the laughter of animal
satisfaction, drinking down flagon after flagon of bitter beer. She
caught echoes and fragments of coarse jokes and coarser suggestions; and
her delicate nature revolted at the scene. She turned to look toward the
mistress of the Castle, wondering how madame, who was of a fibre as fine
as her own, could endure such sights and sounds. Eleanore sat calmly
listening to monseigneur, her eyes lifted a little above the level of
the scene, her lips smiling, her air pleasantly animated, though she was
scarcely eating, and only a cup of milk stood before her place. As for
the Bishop, he was unfeignedly enjoying himself. A generous portion of
roast peacock was on his plate, and a bottle of red wine stood close at
his elbow. His wit was at its best, and he was entertaining all his
immediate neighborhood with such stories and reminiscences as he alone
could relate. Lenore found relief in the sight of him and madame, and,
pulling herself together, turned to the young squire on her right hand,
and began to talk to him gently. Roland listened to her with the
reverent adoration entertained for her by every man about the Castle;
but his replies were a little inadequate, and presently Lenore was again
sitting silent, her burning eyes staring straight in front of her, her
white face, framed in its shining hair, looking very set, her white
robes gleaming frostily in the candle-light, her whole bearing stiffly
unapproachable. She was nervous and uneasy, and she longed intensely to
escape to her own quiet room. But there was madame talking serenely on,
apparently unconscious of the gluttony around her; there was Alixe the
Scornful, merrily jesting with Anselm, who had forgotten his frowns and
his Latin together. Here was a great company of varied people, variously
making merry, among whom there was not one that could have understood or
excused her displeasure with the scene. Therefore she was fain to sit
on, disconsolate, enduring as best she might her weariness and her
contempt.
“En passant!” cried the Bishop, presently, “where is David le petit? Is
the dwarf lying sick?”
“Why, indeed, I do not know,” answered Eleanore, looking around her.
“David! Is David not among us?” she cried.
At this moment there was a commotion at one end of the room, and
presently the table began to shake. Dishes and flagons clattered
together, and a little ripple of laughter rose and flowed along from
mouth to mouth, following the progress of David himself, who was darting
rapidly down the table, picking his way easily between clumps of holly
and tall candles, and dishes and plates and flagons, as he moved around
toward Madame Eleanore and her little party. His costume added
materially to the effect of his appearance, for he was dressed like an
elf, in scarlet hose, pointed brown shoes, tight jerkin of brown slashed
with red, and peaked, parti-colored cap. In this garb his tiny figure
showed off straight and slender, and his ruddy face and glittering eyes
gave him proper animation for the role he had chosen to play.
Flying down the table till he came to a halt in front of madame and the
Bishop, he jerked the cap from his head, whirled lightly round on his
toes, twice or thrice, and then, with a quaint gesture of introduction,
he sang, in a sing-song tone, these verses:—
“From elf-land I—
Gnome or troll—
Leaped from the cave
Whence dolmens roll
Down from on high
To the tumbling wave!
“In darkness I live;
In darkness I love.
Yet there’s one thing
To mortals I give.
From treasure-trove
Jewels I bring!”
With the last words he drew, from a fat pouch at his side, a handful of
bright bits of quartz-crystal, and, tossing them high in the air, let
them fall over him and down upon the table in a glittering shower. There
was a quick scramble for them; and then, with an uncanny laugh, David
pirouetted down the table, backward, guiding himself miraculously among
the articles that loaded the board, flinging about him, at every other
step, more of his “jewels,” and now and then singing more extemporaneous
verses concerning his mysterious country. All the table paused in its
eating and drinking to watch him, for, when he chose, he was a
remarkably clever and magnetic actor. To-day he was making an unusual
effort, and presently even Lenore leaned forward a little to catch his
words; and, in a swift glance, he perceived that some color had come
into her cheeks, and a faint light into her eyes.
It made a pleasant interlude in the feasting; and when at length the
little man, with a hop and a spring, left the table, and came round to
the place where he was accustomed to sit, he was followed by a burst of
enthusiastic applause.
The gayety that he had excited by his rhymes and his pebble shower did
not die away for some time. By now, however, the eating was at an end,
and a lighter tone of conversation spread through the room, as the
footboys brought in two extra casks of beer and some dozens of bottles
of red wine. This was the wished-for stage of the day’s entertainment,
and if there was any one present that should be unminded for what was to
come, this was the signal for departure. Madame Lenore was the only one
in the room to go; but she rose the moment that the table had been
cleared of food, and, with a slight bow to madame and monseigneur,
slipped quietly to the stairs and passed up to her room with a relief in
her heart that the day was over.
The last white fold of Lenore’s drapery had scarcely disappeared round
the bend in the stairway, when there came a knocking upon the outer door
of the great hall, which was presently thrust open, before one of the
henchmen could reach it, to let in a beggar from the bitter cold
outside. It was the last day of the week of hospitality, and perhaps
this wanderer was the more readily admitted for that fact. It was a
woman, ragged, unkempt, and purple with cold. Madame Eleanore just
glanced at her, and then signed to those at the lower end of the table
to give her place with them, and bring her food. But the new-comer
seemed not to notice the invitations of those near by. She stood still,
gazing intently toward Madame Eleanore, till presently one of the
henchmen, somewhat affected with liquor, sprang from his place with the
intention of pulling her to a seat. In this act he got a view of her
face with the light from a torch falling full across it. Instantly he
started back with a loud exclamation,—
“Mademoiselle!”
Then all at once the woman, holding out both her arms toward madame’s
chair, swayed forward to her knees with a low wailing cry that brought
the whole company to their feet. There was one moment of terrible
silence, and then a woman’s scream rang through the room, as Madame
Eleanore staggered to her feet and started forward to the side of the
wanderer.
“Laure! Laure! O God! my Laure!”
As the two women—madame now on her knees beside her daughter—intertwined
their arms, and the older woman felt again the living flesh of her
flesh, the throng at the table moved slowly together and drew closer and
closer to these central figures. Nearest of all stood Alixe and
Courtoise, white-faced, tremulous, but with great joy written in their
eyes. They had recognized Laure simultaneously an instant before madame,
but they had restrained themselves from rushing upon her, leaving the
first place to the mother.
Eleanore was fondling Laure in her arms, murmuring over her inarticulate
things, while tears streamed from her eyes, and her strained throat
palpitated with sobs. What Laure did or felt, none knew. She lay back,
half-fainting, in the warm clasp; but presently she struggled a little
away, and sat straight. Pushing the tangled hair out of her eyes,—those
black, brilliant eyes that were still undimmed,—and seeing the universal
gaze upon her, she shrank within herself, and whispered to her mother:
“In the name of God, madame, I prithee let me be alone with thee!”
Then Eleanore bethought herself, and rose, lifting Laure also to her
feet. For a moment she looked about her, and then with a mere lifting of
her hand dispersed the crowd. They melted away like snow in rain, till
only three were left there in the great hall: Courtoise, Alixe, and
lastly monseigneur, who during the whole scene had stood apart from the
throng, the law of excommunication heavy upon him. Forbid a mother,
starved by nearly a year of denial of her child, to satisfy herself now
that that child was at last returned to her? Not he, the man of flesh
and blood and human passions!
Madame stood still for an instant in the centre of the disordered room,
supporting Laure with one arm. Then she turned to Alixe.
“Go thou, Alixe, and get food,—milk, and meat, and bread,—and bring it
in the space of a few moments to my room. But let no other seek to
disturb us in our solitude. Now, my girl!”
Madame led her daughter across the hall and up the stairs, and to the
door of her bedroom, into which Laure passed first. Madame followed her
in, and closed and fastened the door after her. Then she turned to her
child.
At last they were alone, where no human eyes could perceive them, no
human ear hear what words they spoke. And now Eleanore’s arms dropped to
her sides, and she stood a little off, face to face with Laure. With
Laure? Yes, it was she,—there could be but one woman like her,—with her
tall, lithe, straight form, terribly wasted now by hardship and
suffering: with those firm features, and the unrivalled hair that hung,
brown and unkempt, to her knees. And again, it was not the Laure that
the mother had known. In her eyes—the great, doubting, haunted, shifting
eyes—lay plainly written the story of the iron that had entered into her
soul. And there was that in her manner, in her bearing, that something
of defiant recklessness, that pierced her mother like a knife. It was
not the rags and the dirt of her body; it was the rags and dirt of her
defiled soul.
The girl looked straight before her into space; but she saw her mother’s
head suddenly lowered, and she saw her mother’s hands go up before her
face.
Then came Alixe’s knock at the door; and Laure went and opened it, took
in the food, set it down on the bed, shut and fastened the door again,
and returned to her mother, who was sitting now beside the shuttered
window, her head lying on her arms, which rested on a table in front of
her.
There was a silence. Laure’s hand crept up to her throat and held it
tight, to keep the strain of repressed sobs from bursting her very
flesh. Her eyes roved round the old, familiar, twilight room; but just
now she did not see. Her brain was reeling under its weight of agonized
weariness. What was she to say or do? What was there for her here? Her
mother sat yonder, bent under the weight of her sin. Was there any
excuse for her to make? Should she try to give reasons? Worst of all,
should she ask forgiveness? Never! Laure had the pride of despair left
in her still. She had come home dreaming that the gates of heaven might
still be open to her. She found them barred; and the password she could
not speak. Hell alone, it seemed, remained.
“Madame,” she said in a hard, quiet voice, “I have come wrongfully home,
thinking thou couldst give me succor here. But I perceive that I do but
pain thee. I will go forth again. ’Tis all I ask.”
At the mere suggestion that Laure should go again, madame’s heart melted
and ran in tears within her. “Ah, Laure! my baby—my girl—thou couldst
not leave me again?” she cried in a kind of wail.
“Mother! First of all, I came to thee!” said the girl, in a whisper that
was very near a sob.
But, unexpectedly, Eleanore rose again, with a gleam of anger coming
anew into her eyes. “Nay; thou didst _not_ first of all come to me! If
thou hadst—if thou hadst—ere thou wast stolen away by the cowardly
dastard that hath ruined thee—!”
Laure trembled violently, and her voice was faint with pleading: “Speak
no ill of him, madame! I was not stolen away. Freely, willingly, I went
with him. Freely—” she drew herself up and held her head high—“freely
and willingly, though with the curse of Heaven on my head, would I go
with him still, were it in the same way!”
“God of God! why hast thou left him, then?”
A black shadow spread itself out before Laure’s eyes, and in her
unpitying wilderness her woman’s soul reeled, blindly. Her voice shook
and her body grew rigid, as she answered: “I—did not—leave him.”
“He is dead?” Eleanore’s tone was softer.
“No; he is not dead!” Laure’s face contorted terribly, as there suddenly
rushed over her the memory of the last three months; and as it swept
upon her, she sank to her knees, and held out her hands again in
supplication: “Ah, pity me! pity me! As thou’rt a woman, pity me, and
ask me not what’s gone! I loved him. God in Heaven! How did I love him!
And he hath gone from me. Mine no more, he left me to wander over the
face of the earth. He left me to weep and mourn through all the years of
mine empty life. Flammecœur! Flammecœur! How wast thou dearer than God!
more merciless than Him.” Here her words became so rapid and so
incoherent that all meaning was lost, and the deserted woman, exhausted,
overcome with her torn emotions, presently fell heavily forward to the
floor, in a faint.
In this scene Eleanore had forgotten every scruple, every resentment,
everything save her own motherhood and Laure’s need. Putting aside all
thought of the girl’s shame, her abandonment, her rejection, she went to
her and lifted her up in her strong and tender arms, and, with the art
known only to the big-souled women of her type, poured comfort upon the
bruised and broken body of the wanderer, and words of cheer and
encouragement into her more cruelly bruised and broken mind. In a few
moments Laure had recovered consciousness, had grown calm, and was
weeping quietly in her mother’s arms.
Then madame began to make her fit for the Castle again. She took off the
soiled and ragged garments, that hung upon the skin and bone of her
wasted body. She bathed the poor flesh with hot water, and with her own
tears. She combed and coiled the wonderful, tangled hair. And lastly,
wrapping her, for warmth, in a huge woollen mantle, she led Laure over
to her bed, drew back the heavy curtains, and laid the weary woman-child
in it, to rest.
When Laure felt this soft comfort; when she realized where, indeed, she
was and who was bending over her; when she knew what land of love and of
tenderness she had finally reached after her months of anguished
wandering,—it seemed that she could bear no more of mingled joy and
pain. She let her tears flow as freely as they would. She clung to her
mother’s hand, smoothing it, kissing it, pressing it to her cheek; and
finally, lulled by the sound of her mother’s voice crooning an old
familiar lullaby, her mind slipped gradually out of reality, and she
went to sleep.
Long and long and long she slept, with the sleep of one that is leaving
an old life behind, and entering slowly into the new. And for many hours
her mother watched her, in the gathering darkness, till after Alixe had
come softly in, and lit a torch near by the bed. And later the mother,
unwilling to leave her child for a single moment, laid herself down,
dressed as she was, and, drawing Laure’s passive form close to her,
finally closed her eyes, and, worn out with emotion and with joy, lost
herself in the mists of sleep.
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER TWELVE_
LAURE
[Illustration]
Through the long, chilly night, mother and daughter slept together, each
with peace in her heart. At dawn, however, madame slipped quietly out of
Laure’s unconscious embrace, and rose and prepared herself for the day.
And presently she left the room, while Laure still slept. It was some
time afterwards before there crept upon the blank of the girl’s mind a
dim, fluttering shadow telling her that light had come again over the
world. How long it was before this first sense became a double
consciousness, no one knows. Laure’s stupor had been so heavy, she had
been so utterly dead in her weariness, that it required a powerful
subconscious effort to throw off the bonds of sleep. But when the two
heavy eyes at last fell open, she gasped, and sat suddenly up in her
bed.
“Holy Mother! it is an angel!”
The face that she looked on smiled sunnily.
“No. I am Lenore.” And she would have come round to the side of the bed,
but that Laure held up a hand to stay her.
“Prithee, prithee, do not move, thou spirit of Lenore! Am I, then, come
into thy land? Is’t heaven—for me?”
For an instant, at the easily explainable illusion about that other, the
new Lenore’s head drooped, and she sighed. How full of the dead maiden
was every member of this Twilight Castle! But again, shaking off the
momentary melancholy, she lifted her eyes, and answered Laure’s fixed
look. So these two young women, whose histories had been so utterly
different, and yet in their way so pitiably alike, learned, in this one
long glance, to know each other. Into Laure’s deeply burning eyes,
Lenore gazed till she was as one under a hypnotic spell. Her senses were
all but swimming before the other turned her look, and then she asked
dreamily: “Thou art Lenore. Tell me, who is Lenore?”
The other hesitated for a moment. She had learned from Alixe, on the
previous evening, the history of the strange home-coming, and all that
any one knew of what had gone before it; and she realized that any
question that Laure might ask must be fully answered. Yet it cost her a
strong mental effort before she could say: “I was the wife of thy
brother.”