Chivalry Part 5

So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new page of his--this Miguel de Rueda,--a jolly lad, who whistled and sang inapposite s.n.a.t.c.hes of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill.

Sang Miguel de Rueda:

"Man's Love, that leads me day by day Through many a screened and scented way, Finds to a.s.suage my thirst.

"No love that may the old love slay, None sweeter than the first.

"Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast As this or that fair maid trips past, Once, and with lesser stir We viewed the grace of love, at last, And turned idolater.

"Lad's Love it was, that in the spring When all things woke to blossoming Was as a child that came Laughing, and filled with wondering, Nor knowing his own name--"

"And still I would prefer to think," the big man interrupted, heavily, "that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so beautiful.--And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary."

The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a decade.

The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile.

"When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de Gatinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this neat affair. And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard's claim to the German crown, against El Sabio--Why, my lad, I ride southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe."

"You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole chance of happiness," Miguel de Rueda estimated.

"That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter, whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen--as I, my little Miguel, have often seen--a man viewing his death-wound with a face of stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say--a woman's twisted and naked body, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout that I ride southward."

Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the page stubbornly said.

"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve G.o.d without faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the Romans--" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for protection to five soldiers--that is, to the five senses,--to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this world--"

"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can a.s.sure you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her G.o.d-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gatinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more intelligent man, and it was G.o.d who bestowed on her sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gatinais. And what am I to deduce from this?"

The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carca.s.s will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue.

But once they are struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of G.o.d,--they are astonishingly fruitful in good works."

The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though you will never know it,--and I hate you a little,--and I envy you a great deal."

"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never quick-witted,--"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride southward."

The page then said, "What is her name?"

Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise."

"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy her."

In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other fled.

Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves.

"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair."

And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting.

Sang Miguel:

"Pa.s.seth a little while, and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and Guenevere is a skull. Mult.i.tudinously we tread toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his broom. Mult.i.tudinously we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but yonder the sun shines upon a gra.s.s-plot, converting it into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.

"Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the gra.s.ses yonder, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are naked. 'Vanity of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love seems very far away to-night, though I might be with her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.

"At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden path.

"She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the Horselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden path"

Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang.

Sang the Prince:

"I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names. And one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the significance of these things, and he went astray to gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path."

"He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of bread and b.u.t.ter, and his heart was troubled by a world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden path.

"He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated whether they were the eyes of G.o.d or gases which burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.

"And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for I had walked in the trodden path."

Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince."

"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to G.o.d. We have our choice,--or to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate."

"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you."

The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of G.o.d's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my Little Miguel."

Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!"

the boy wailed in the darkness.

And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said:

"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people, she and I, the children of many kings, of G.o.d's regents here on earth; and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing."

The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of G.o.d:

"Dame, je n'ose, Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose, En qui li filz Diex se repose,"

and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the very Son of G.o.d! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of praying. O Virgin debonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a woman--!"

So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang half as if in defiance.

Sang Miguel:

"And still,--whatever years impend To witness Time a fickle friend, And Youth a dwindling fire,-- I must adore till all years end My first love, Heart's Desire.

"I may not hear men speak of her Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir To greet her pa.s.sing-by, And I, in all her worshipper Must serve her till I die.