“Thou—_wast_—his wife, thou sayest?”
Lenore gazed at her sadly, wondering if the wanderer must so soon be
confronted with new sorrow. Laure sat there, bewildered, but questioning
with her eyes, a suggestion of fear beginning to show in her face.
Lenore realized how madame must shrink from telling the story of
Gerault’s death; so, presently, lifting her eyes to Laure’s again, she
said in a low voice,—
“Gerault’s wife was I, because—since September, thy brother—sleeps—in
the chapel—by his father.”
Laure listened with wide eyes to these words; and, having heard, she
neither moved nor spoke. A few tears gathered slowly, and fell down her
face to her woollen robe, and then she bowed her head till it rested on
the hands clasped on her knee. Lenore stood where she was, looking on,
knowing not whether to go or stay; realizing instinctively that there
are natures that desire to find their own comfort.
While Lenore was still debating the point, Madame Eleanore and Alixe
came together into the room; and as soon as madame beheld Lenore, she
knew that her daughter had learned all that she was to know of sorrow:
that what she herself most dreaded, had mercifully come to pass. And
going to the bed, she took Laure into her arms.
Their embrace was as close as the first of yesterday had been. Laure
clung to her mother, getting comfort from the mere contact; and, in her
child’s grief for the dead, Eleanore felt the touch of that sympathy for
which she had hungered in silence through the first shock of her loss.
For Laure was of her own blood and of Gerault’s; had known the Seigneur
as brother, companion, and equal, and had looked up to him even as he
had looked up to his mother. Thus, bitterly poignant as were these
moments of fresh grief, there was in them also a great consolation,—the
consolation of companionship. And when finally madame raised her head,
there was written in her face what none had seen there since the time of
Laure’s departure for her novitiate at La Madeleine. Then she reminded
Laure of Alixe’s presence, and Laure, looking up, smiled through her
tears, and held out both hands.
“Alixe! Alixe! my sister! Art thou glad I am come home?”
“So glad, Laure! There have been many hours empty for want of thee since
thy going. And art thou—” she hesitated a little—“art thou to stay with
us now?”
Accidentally, inadvertently, had come the question that had lain hidden
both in Laure’s heart and in her mother’s since almost the first moment
of the return. Laure herself dared not answer Alixe; but she looked
fearfully at her mother, her eyes filled with mute pleading. And
Eleanore, seeing the look, made a sudden decision in her heart,—
“Yea! Laure shall stay with us now! There shall be no doubting of it.
Laure is my child; and I shall keep her with me, an all Christendom
forbid!”
The last sentence flew out in answer to madame’s secret fears; and she
did not realize how much meaning it might hold for other ears. Her
speech was followed by an intense silence. Laure did not dare ask aloud
the questions that reason answered for her; and Lenore and Alixe both
felt that it was not their place to speak. In the end, then, Eleanore
herself had to break the strain, which she did by saying, with a brisk
air,—
“Come, come, Laure! Rise, and go into thine own room here. I have laid
out one of the old-time gowns, with shoes, chemise, bliault, and
under-tunic complete, and also a wimple and head-veil. Make thyself
ready for the day, while we go down to break our fast. When thou’rt
dressed I will have food brought thee here; and after thou’st eaten,
monseigneur will come up to thee. Hasten, for ’tis rarely cold!”
Laure jumped from the bed eager to see her childhood’s room again; eager
for her meal; most of all eager, in spite of her apprehensiveness, to
know what St. Nazaire had to say to her. As she paused to gather her
mantle close about her, and to push the hair out of her eyes, her gaze
chanced to meet that of Lenore. There was between them no spoken word;
but in that instant was born a sudden affection which, while they lived
together, saw not the end of its growth.
As Eleanore and the two young women left madame’s room on their way
downstairs, Laure entered alone into the room of her youth and her
innocence. It was exactly as it had been on the day she last saw it. The
small, curtained bed was ready for occupancy. The chairs, the table, the
round steel mirror, the carved wooden chest for clothes, lastly, the
small priedieu, were just where they had always stood. The wooden
shutters were open, and the half-transparent glass was all aflame with
the reflection of sunlight on the sea; for the cold, clear morning was
advancing. Across a narrow settle, beside one of the windows, lay the
clothes that the mother had selected,—the girlhood clothes that she had
worn in those years of her other life. Like one that dimly dreams, Laure
took these garments up, one by one, and examined them, handling them
with the same ruminative tenderness of touch that she might have used
for some one that had been very dear to her, but had died long since,—so
long that the bitterness of death had gone from memory.
When she had looked at them for a long time, Laure began slowly to don
her clothes. She performed her toilet with all the precision of her
maidenhood, coiling her hair with a care that suggested vanity, and
adjusting her filet and veil with the same touch that they had known so
many times before. Her outer tunic was of green _saie_; and even though
her whole form had grown deplorably thin, she found it a little snug in
bust and hip. Finally, when she was quite dressed, she sat down at one
of the windows to wait for some one to bring food to her. To her
surprise, it was Lenore who carried up the tray of bread and milk; and
she found herself a little relieved that no former member of the Castle
was to see her yet in the familiar dress of long ago. When she took the
tray from the frail white hands of her sister-in-law, she murmured
gratefully: “I thank thee that thou hast deigned to wait on me, madame.”
Lenore’s big blue eyes opened wide, as she smiled and answered:
“Prithee, say not ‘madame.’ Rather, if thou canst, I would have thee
call me ‘sister,’ for such I should wish to be to thee.”
“My sister!” Laure’s voice was choked as she raised both arms and threw
them about the slender body of the other girl with such abandon that
Lenore was obliged to put her off a little. Finally, however, Laure sat
down to the table on which she had placed her simple breakfast, and as
she carried the first bite to her lips, Lenore moved softly toward the
door. Before going out, however, she turned and said quietly: “Thou’lt
not be long alone. The Bishop is coming to thee at once.”
Laure’s spoon fell suddenly into her bowl, and she looked quickly round;
but, to her chagrin, Lenore had already slipped away.
Left to herself, Laure could not eat. Hungry as she was, her anxiety and
her suspense were greater than her appetite. Why was it that Lenore had
so suddenly escaped from her? Why was it that she had seen no members of
the Castle company save three women since her home-coming? Why was she
forced thus to eat alone? Above all, why should the Bishop come to her
here, instead of receiving her, as had been his custom, in the chapel?
Laure remembered the last serious talk she had had with St. Nazaire, and
shuddered. In her own mind she realized perfectly the spiritual enormity
of her sin; and, however persistently she might refuse to confess it to
herself, she knew also what the penalty of that sin must be. It was many
minutes before she could force herself to recommence her meal; and she
had taken little when there was a tap on the door. She had not time to
do more than rise when the door opened, and her mother, followed by St.
Nazaire, entered the room.
Madame dropped behind as the Bishop advanced, and Laure bowed before
him.
“My child, I trust thou art found well in body?” said St. Nazaire, more
solemnly than she had ever heard him speak.
“Yes, monseigneur,” was the subdued reply.
Now madame came up, and indicated a chair to the Bishop, who, after
seeing her seated, sat down himself, while Laure remained on her feet in
front of them. Then followed a pause, uncomfortable to all, terrifying
to Laure, who was becoming hysterically nervous with dread. She dared
not, however, break the silence; and with a convulsive sigh she folded
her arms across her breast, and stood waiting for whatever was to come.
Monseigneur regarded her closely and steadily, as if he were reading
something that he wished to know of her, but at the same time he did not
make her shrink from him. On the contrary, his expression brought the
assurance that he had lost nothing of his old-time sympathy with human
nature. His first question was unhesitatingly direct.
“Laure,” he said very quietly, “art thou bound by the marriage tie to
this Bertrand Flammecœur?”
At the sound of the name Laure trembled, and her white face grew whiter
still. “No,” she answered in a half-whisper, at the same time clenching
her two hands till the nails pierced her flesh.
“And thou hast lived with him, under his name, since thy departure from
the priory of the Holy Madeleine?”
Laure paused for a moment to steady her voice, and then answered
huskily: “Until two months past.”
“And in that two months?”
“I have begged my way from where we were—hither.”
“Thou hast in this time known none but the man Flammecœur?”
Laure crimsoned and put up her hand in protest. Then she said quietly,
“None.”
Monseigneur bowed his head and remained silent for a moment. When he
looked at her again it was with a gentler expression. “Laure,” said he,
in a very kindly voice, “but a little time after thy flight from the
priory, I placed upon thee, and upon the man that abducted thee, the ban
of excommunication, for violating the holiest laws of the Holy Church.
That ban is not yet raised, and by it, as well thou knowest, all that
come in voluntary contact with thee are defiled.”
For a moment Laure dropped her head to her breast. When she lifted it
again, her face had not changed; and she asked, “Can that ban ever be
lifted?”
“Yes. By me.”
Laure fell upon her knees before him. “What must I do? Tell me the
penance! I would give anything—even to my life—yet—nay! There is one
thing I will not do.”
St. Nazaire frowned. “What is that?” he asked.
“Father, I will not go back into the priory. I will never return alive
into that living death. Rather would I cast myself from the top of the
Castle cliff into the sea below, and trust—”
“Laure! Laure! Be silent!” cried Eleanore, sharply.
Laure stopped and stood motionless, her eyes aflame, her face deathly
white, her fingers twining and intertwining among themselves, as she
waited for St. Nazaire to speak again. His hands were folded upon his
knee, and he appeared lost in thought. Only after an unendurable
suspense did he look again into the girl’s eyes, saying slowly, in a
tone lower than was habitual to him,—
“Thou tookest once the vows of the nun. These, it is true, thou hast
broken continually, and hast abused and violated till their chain of
virtue binds thee no more. Yet the words of those vows passed thy lips
scarce more than a year agone; and for that reason thou art not free.
Ere thou canst be absolved of duty to the priory, thou must go to the
Mother-prioress and ask her humbly if she will again receive thee into
the convent. An she refuse, thou wilt be freed from the bond.”
“Monseigneur—will she set me free?” asked Laure, in a low tone.
“Yea, Laure; for methinks I shall counsel her so to do. Thou hast not
the vocation of a nun. Thy spirit is too much thine own, too
freedom-loving, to accept the suppression of that secluded life. If I
will, I can see to it that thou’rt freed from the priory. But that being
accomplished—what then, Demoiselle Laure?”
“Ah—after that—may not the ban be removed? Can I obtain no absolution?
Can I not be made free to dwell here in my home in my beloved Castle,—my
fitting Crépuscule?—Mother! Shall I not be received here? Have I no
home?”
“This is thy home, and I thy mother always. Though my soul be condemned
to eternal fire, Laure, thou art my child, the flesh of my flesh and the
blood of my blood; and I will not give thee up.”
“Eleanore!” The Bishop spoke sharply, and his face grew severe.
“Eleanore, deceive not thyself. Nor yet thou, thou child of wilfulness!
Laure hath sinned not only against the rules of her Church and her God,
but against the laws of mankind. Her sin has been great and very ugly.
Think not that, by brave words of motherhood, or many tears and
pleadings of sudden repentance, she can regain her old position. The
stain of this bygone year will remain upon her forever. She is under a
heavy ban, and she must go through a rigorous penance ere she can be
received again among the undefiled. Art ready, Laure, to place thy sick
soul in my hands?”
Laure bent her head.
“Then I prescribe for thee this penance: Thou shalt go alone, on foot,
to Holy Madeleine, and there seek of the Reverend Mother thy freedom
from the priory. If it be granted, thou mayest return hither to this
same room and remain shut up in utter solitude, to pray and fast as
rigorously as thy body will admit, for the space of fourteen days. If,
by that time, thou art come to see truly the magnitude of thy offence,
and if thy mind be purified of evil thoughts and thy heart opened to the
abounding mercy of God, I will absolve thee of thy sin, and lift away
the ban of Heaven. For meseemeth, my daughter, that thy sin found thee
out or ever thou hadst reached this house of safety. There is the mark
of suffering upon thy brow, and, seeing it, I bow before the power of
God, that holdeth over us whithersoever we may go. But see that in thy
lonely hours thou find true repentance for thy evil deed. For if that
come not, then truly shalt thou be an outcast on the face of the earth.
I will go to-day to the priory to talk with the Mère Piteuse, if thy
heart accepteth my word.”
Laure fell upon her knees before the Bishop and kissed his hand in token
of submission. St. Nazaire suffered her for a few moments to humble
herself, and then, lifting her up, he rose himself and quickly left the
room.
Eleanore remained a few moments longer with her daughter, and then went
away, leaving Laure alone again, to dread the ordeal that was before
her, the facing of the assemblage of nuns in that place that she
remembered as her heart’s prison.
By order of the Bishop, Laure was left alone all day, and this
twenty-four hours was the most wretched that she had to spend after her
return to Le Crépuscule. On the following day she went alone to the
priory,—not on foot, as the Bishop had at first commanded; for the snow
was too deep, and Laure too much exhausted by her privations of the last
two months, for her safely to endure the fatigue of such a walk. She
rode thither on horseback; and possibly extracted more soul’s good out
of the ride than she would have got afoot, for the whole way was laden
with bitter memories and grief and shame. The Bishop himself met her at
the priory gate, and he remained at her side throughout the time that
she was there. The ordeal was not terrible. Mère Piteuse bore out her
name, and Laure thought that the spirit of the Saviour had surely
descended upon the reverend woman. As an unheard-of concession, the
penitent was permitted to recant her vows before only the eight officers
of the priory assembled in the chapter-house, instead of before the
whole company of nuns in the great church; and thus Laure did not see at
all her former companion and abettor, Sœur Eloise, a meeting with whom
she had dreaded more than anything else. And when, in the afternoon,
Laure finally rode away from the priory gate, it was with a heart
throbbing with devotion for St. Nazaire and his goodness to her. Swiftly
and eagerly, in the falling twilight, she traversed the road leading
back to the Castle, and, when she reached home, night had fallen. Her
mother, who had spent the day in the deepest anxiety, was waiting for
her in the great hall, and, the moment that Laure entered, weary with
the now unusual exercise, she cried out, “It is well? Thou art
dismissed?”
And as Laure began to answer the question with a full description of the
day, her mother drew her slowly up the stairs, across the hall, and
finally into her own narrow room, which was to be the chamber of
penance. When they entered there, Laure became suddenly silent; for the
little place was dark and chill, and the thought of what was before her
struck an added tremor to her heart. Madame read her thoughts and said
gently,—
“Be not so sad, dear child. When thou thinkest of the fair, pure, loving
life that lies before us, in this Castle of thy youth, surely fourteen
little days of peaceful solitude cannot fright thee? Think always that
God is on high, and that around thee are those that love thee well; and
thus thou canst not be very miserable. Lights and food shall be brought;
and then—I bid thee make much of thy solitude, my child; for there is no
more healing balm for wounded souls. Now, commending thee to the mercy
of the All-merciful, I leave thee.”
In the darkness, Laure clung to her mother as if it were their last
embrace, and madame had to put the girl’s hands away before she would
bear to be left alone. But at last the door was closed and bolted on the
outside; and Laure, within, knew that her imprisonment was begun.
Feeling her way to a chair, she seated herself thereon, and laid her
head in her hands. Burning and incoherent thoughts hurried through her
brain, and she was still lost in these when there was a soft tap at her
door, and the outer bolt was drawn. She rose and stumbled hurriedly to
open it, but there was no one outside. On the floor was a burning
candle, and a tray on which stood a jug of water and a loaf of bread. As
she took them in, Laure experienced a wave of desolation. However, she
set the food and drink down on her table, lighted the torch on the wall
at the candle-flame, and finally sat herself down to eat. No grace to
God passed her lips as she took her first bite from the loaf; for her
heart was bitter in its weariness. But after she had eaten and drunk she
lost the inclination to brood; and, overcome with weariness and the
emotions of the day, she hurriedly disrobed, extinguished both her
lights, and crept, with her first sense of comfort, into the warmly
covered bed. For a long time she lay there, chilly and a little nervous,
but thinking of nothing. Then gradually her spirit grew calmer; some of
the weariness was done away, and she fell asleep.
When next she woke it was daylight,—a gray, January morning,—and Laure
realized, rather disconsolately, that she could sleep no more for the
time. Therefore she left her bed, threw a mantle around her, and went to
the door, to see if there might be food without. Somewhat to her dismay,
she found the door locked fast, and, having no means of knowing what the
hour might be, she thought that possibly she had overslept, and that she
should have nothing to eat throughout the morning. The heaviness of her
head told her that she had slept too long; and, not daring to get back
to bed again, she began resignedly to dress. She was in the midst of her
toilet when there came a tap at the door, and she flew to open it.
Outside stood a kitchen-boy, who handed her a tray containing fresh
bread and water, and asked her with formal respect for the stale food of
the night before. This she gave him; and immediately the door was shut
and rebolted.
[Illustration:
_Mother and child were happy to sit all
day in the flower-strewn meadow.—Page 402_
]
With grim precision Laure finished dressing and broke her fast, meantime
keeping her thoughts fixed on the most trivial subjects. But when her
meal was over, and she knew how long the day must be, and realized that
there was no escape from herself, she sat down in the largest chair in
the room, let her eyes wander over the familiar objects, and allowed her
thoughts to take what form they would. The terrible fatigue of her
lonely journey was quite gone now. Nor was there in her own person
anything to remind her of her recent suffering. Her body was clean,
well-clothed, and warm, and, in her youth, the memory of the past
terrible two months grew dim, and instead there rose up before her
mental vision a very different picture,—an image,—the image of the idol
and the ruin of her life: her joy, her shame, her ecstasy, and her
despair; Bertrand Flammecœur, the troubadour, in his matchless,
irresponsible untrustworthiness, his incomparable beauty, his fiery
enthusiasm. For, strange as it may be, all the bitterness, all the
suffering that this man had brought her, had not killed her love for him
nor blackened his image in her heart. There being nothing to check her
fancy, Laure went mentally back to the hour of her flight with the
troubadour, and passed slowly over the whole period of their life
together,—from the first days of physical agony and mental shame through
the period of increasing delight, to the culmination of her happiness in
him and the beginning of its end. Once more she reviewed their journey
out of Brittany up the north coast to Calais, whence, in the fair spring
weather, they had taken passage to Dover, in England, thence making
their way by slow stages to London. Here, in the train of the Duke of
Gloucester, uncle of the young Richard, the most powerful man in the
kingdom, the two had passed their summer. To Laure it was a summer of
fairyland. Flammecœur had become her god, and she saw him ascend height
after height of popularity and favor. His nationality and his profession
won for him instant recognition, for trouvères from Provence were
Persian nightingales to the England of that day. And after his first
introduction into high places, his breeding, his dress, and his graceful
personality brought him an enviable position, especially among the women
of the court. Laure passed always as his wife, and was adroitly
exploited among the court gallants. She was still too single-minded to
receive the slightest taint from this life. She was found to be as
incorruptible as she was pretty, and by this unusual fact her own
reputation went up, and her popularity rivalled that of the troubadour.
If this manner of life sometimes weighed on her and brought her
something of remorse, she found her consolation in the fact that
Flammecœur never wavered in his fidelity. For the time being he was
thoroughly infatuated with her; and in their stolen hours of golden
solitude both of them found their reward for the ofttimes wearisome
round of pleasures that, with them, constituted work.
Now, alone, in her solitary prison-room, Laure of Le Crépuscule reviewed
her high and holy noon of love, forgetting its subsequence, brooding
only over its supreme forgetfulness, till the madness of it was tingling
in her every vein, and there rushed over her again, in a tumultuous
wave, all that fierce longing, all that hopeless desire, that she
thought herself to have endured for the last time. In their early days
Flammecœur had been so much her companion, so devoted to her in little,
pretty, telling ways, so constant to her and to her alone, that the
thought of any life other than the one with him would have been to her
like a promise of eternal death. It was not more their hours of delirium
than those of silent communion that they had held together, which
brought her now the tears of hopeless yearning. All that she desired
without him, was death. All that she had loved or cared for was with
him.
At this time came to her the thought of Lenore; and she had an
instinctive feeling that, had God seen fit to give her that most
precious of all gifts, motherhood, this penitential cell had not been
the end for her.