Just at this time Rose Westel met with an adventure. She was paying a
long-promised visit to some distant relatives at Ely. It was a great
event in her life, for it was the first time she had left her home.
Any change from the dull routine at the Bury was welcome, and yet,
after the first excitement died down, she found herself unhappier
than ever. The sight of Ely Castle proudly rearing its towers over
the lowlands awakened in her a bitter discontent. The great grim pile
stirred curious passions within her breast; there were times when she
looked on it with an icy dread at her heart, for behind those curving
walls rippled the waters of the moat--her mother's deathbed; there were
moments when she looked on it with a secret pride that she should be
descended from one of its haughty rulers. Then she would give way to
frantic rage that she should not be there presiding as its mistress. It
was common talk that the present Baron was only the illegitimate son of
her father's brother. Why, then, had he been chosen instead of her,
who stood nearer in the succession?
No one suspected her of these outbursts, for she indulged in them
only where she was unobserved. This habit had grown on her since she
was a little tot, and her pride had kept her from showing how keenly
she felt the shrugs and significant glances of the former companions
of her mother. Their prophecies concerning her future were obvious,
her own idleness and wilfulness being thrown into high relief by the
contrasting industry and self-sacrifice of her cousin Matilda. There
had been times when she had tried her best to hate Matilda, who was
always being held up to her as a model, but Matilda's own love and
admiration for her made it impossible.
So for many years she had alternated between tempestuous fits
of determination to fulfil the kind prophecies of her mother's
generation--to be out and out wicked and have done with it--and sullen
resolutions to take the veil and enter the neighboring convent. The
grewsome picture of her mother's waterlogged body floating on the moat
had kept her from the one, a certain leer on the Father Confessor's
face had kept her from the other. She never explained to any one
why she had left off going to confession, for what would have been
the use? They would have said that she had inherited her mother's
wickedness, so that even saints were tempted by her. She would never be
judged as other maids.
Again and again she asked herself why had her mother sinned? It was
her refusal to wed either of the two fellows whom her overlord had
chosen for her that brought her to the Baron's notice. On seeing her
he ceased to insist upon that special prerogative. What right had her
mother to shrink from the churls that had been allotted to her? Her sin
was so unnecessary that Rose looked on it with bitter impatience. The
thick-flowing blood of the rustics had been in her veins; she should
have been well content to wed some great bullock of a fellow and bear
him countless stolid, flaxen-haired children. What right had she to
bring into the world a being with every taste different from those
about her, with every nerve tingling with revolt? True, Rose herself
felt that she would knife a man before she would mate with one of
those great hulks of men who were little above the oxen they drove or
the sheep they tended. But she had the right to shudder; gentle blood
flowed in her veins just as truly as it did in the proud Baron yonder.
Just as much as he, she had a right to feel her heart leap within her
at the sight of luxury and daintiness and beauty. How her hands longed
to feel the touch of soft furs and velvets and rich stuffs! Oh, again
and again she wished that her mother had flung her babe also on the
moat.
As she was sitting alone one day underneath the trees, near the
highway, she was startled by the approach of a gay cavalcade bringing
color and life and laughter into the gloomy woods. First rode the
Baron, usually a superb figure on his magnificent coal-black horse,
but now a most ridiculous figure with his clothes put on wrong side
forward, his hat tilted over his nose, and long streamers of different
colored ribands hanging from his beard, down his breast, and along his
legs, where also hung numerous tiny bells tinkling with every motion.
His horse was decorated as fantastically as its master, and behind him
followed two score of lusty fellows decked out in motley liveries of
green and yellow and covered with scarves and ribands and laces hung
all over with gold. From each of these jangled and dangled countless
silvern bells, heightening the din made by the pipers and drummers that
followed, playing weird discords like a devil's dance. A number of
ladies with their gallants, all masked and gayly costumed, now rode
up, all shrieking with laughter.
As the Baron caught sight of Rose standing near the road, gazing at the
unwonted sight in open bewilderment, there swept into his eyes that
look with which all men greeted her beauty. He whispered a command to
one of his lackeys, who instantly seized the girl and conducted her to
the Baron, who gazed down on her amazed--for how could it be that he
had overlooked such a rare beauty in his vicinity? For the moment he
regretted the escapade that made him cut so ridiculous a figure in her
eyes.
"Thou must proclaim thyself a follower of my Lord of Misrule," he said,
smiling down at her and lifting up her chin with one gauntleted hand.
She did not reply, but gazed on the ground in embarrassment, the color
going and coming in her cheeks.
"Look, girl," spoke up one of the Baron's companions, "none may
encounter us save they wear my Lord's badge," and with a leer, he
attempted to fasten a knot of ribands on the girl's kerchief. She made
a quick gesture of impatience and stepped back angrily, but at a low
word from the Baron she paused, and turned her exquisite profile toward
him.
"Wilt refuse my badge?" he asked softly. She turned her face to him and
curtsied, answering readily:--
"I need not that to make me a humble servant of your Lordship;" but her
lips trembled and the blood was pumping noisily about her ears, and she
found she could speak only in a strained whisper.
Some of the ladies clapped their hands at her readiness, and the Baron,
with a light laugh, sprang from his horse and pinned on the badge,
taking as long to do so as he possibly could, while the others looked
on in amusement and made audible comments, even the ladies chuckling
over the coarse badinage that was bandied about.
"Two groats for the badge, girl," cried one saucy fellow as the Baron
at last reluctantly took his hands from the girl, and stood off in mock
admiration of his own handiwork, "two groats!"
"I have no money," exclaimed Rose, sullenly. The interruption had
jarred upon her. For a brief space she had fancied herself and the
Baron alone in the world. De Leaufort turned angrily upon the fellow.
"Who speaks of payment to a comely maid," he demanded.
"Ay, by St. Clara, a beauty like her needs no groat in her pocket, for
she carries payment ever in her face," spoke up another fellow, who
had been watching the scene with considerable amusement. "I see the end
of poor Lillian's reign," he muttered in his beard.
The Baron threw an arm about Rose's waist, and, drawing her to him,
pressed a quick hot kiss on her lips. "I am richly paid," he cried, as
she sprang from him and bounded off through the woods.
"Richly indeed!" echoed a couple of envious ones.
"And doubtless the treasury is not yet exhausted," laughed one who knew
the Baron was not one to let such a beauty lightly slip through his
fingers.
For an instant de Leaufort looked ruefully after the girl. She had
not seemed to him a girl that would resent a kiss. At a whisper from
a companion, however, he smiled, nodded his head, sprang into the
saddle, and a moment later nothing but a cloud of dust rose where
the gay cavalcade had rested. On they proceeded with a great din and
racket, bringing out from every door they passed heads that shook with
disapproval over the light-hearted gayety of the rich folks, and their
careless misusing of fineries and good clothes, while the poor had to
groan and sweat even for such poor rags as they could find to cover
their nakedness.
With the queer contradictions of maidenhood, which yearns and spurns
all of a breath, Rose fled to her friends only to announce her
sudden determination to return to the Bury the very next day. To all
their pleas to persuade her to remain, she was obdurate, although a
voice deep down within her pleaded their cause with even far greater
eloquence than they could command. Indeed, no one could have been more
surprised than herself at the sudden resolution. She had passed hours
before the castle picturing all sorts of wild, impossible situations
with herself as the heroine and the Baron as the hero, and yet, now
that something had really happened, she ran away. There was a certain
look in the Baron's eyes as his beard had swept across her cheek that
told her with unfailing instinct that he would not lightly let her go
from him. An exultant subconsciousness told her that, until he found
her, there would be no woman in the world for him. And yet she was
fleeing from him even as the startled stag at the scent of danger
throws back its antlers and leaps through the forest. She questioned
her own decision as impatiently as did her friends. She did not quite
understand herself. Was there deep down a desire to show her power,
to heighten her charm, by giving him a little trouble in finding her?
She could not say. She was not sure that she was not playing with her
conscience and making a pretence of saving her soul. She knew only
that a wild desire to run away possessed her, one too strong to be
withstood. She merely obeyed her reigning impulse as she had done all
her life. With the morrow a new one might come and then there would be
plenty of time to yield to that.