Chivalry Part 6

"For I remember: this is she That reigns in one man's memory Immune to age and fret, And stays the maid I may not see Nor win to, nor forget."

It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other.

Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauleon, on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered over the remnants of their meal.

Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gatinais had lodged there for a whole week, watching the north road, as circ.u.mspect of all pa.s.sage as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one, doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was very much afraid of his gigantic patron.

"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness that was ingratiating.

The host shuddered and obeyed.

Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he pa.s.sed the black little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there.

De Gatinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He, too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de Gatinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear.

Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, illimitable surety, and she loved de Gatinais with a pa.s.sion which dwarfed comprehension.

"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so that my Etienne may die unshamed!"

"I must question, messire," de Gatinais was saying, "whether you have been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now!

be advised by me, messire--"

Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk."

"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; to you she is nothing."

"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to whom, G.o.d willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded us, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we of England."

"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gatinais spat at him, viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the corner-stone.

"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted.

I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded.

England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance.

On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the net of circ.u.mstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gatinais, more deeply than you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then cry quits, Messire de Gatinais, and afterward part in peace, and in common repentance."

"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gatinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, G.o.d alone divides with my lady, and the portion which G.o.d possesses He holds but as a part of her domain, and as her va.s.sal.'" "This is blasphemy,"

Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end of this."

De Gatinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part.

Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three weeks she has been tramping G.o.d knows whither or in what company--"

He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided."

De Gatinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the world?"

"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes."

"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an orange already squeezed--quite dry, messire."

"Face of G.o.d!" the Prince said.

But de Gatinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish.

In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our blood flow like this flagon's contents?"

"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing as base as you."

De Gatinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head striking one leg of the table.

"A candle!" de Gatinais cried, and he panted now--"a hundred candles to the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of England.

The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound.

Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share the world with a thing as base as you!"

In silence de Gatinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered.

"_I was eloquent, I was magnificent_" she said, "_so that in the end her reserve was shattered!_ Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you--I know not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed.

"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gatinais replied; "for as G.o.d reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, and my shame is very bitter."

She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that."

"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope of you vanish, all hope of Sicily--in effect, I lied as a cornered beast spits out his venom."

"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gatinais, you and I are not strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things of life. But this man can enjoy--enjoy, mark you--the commission of any act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become all which he loves--since he loves it,--and that I be in thought and deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through."

"You love him!" said de Gatinais.

She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of me--heart, soul, and body--may be longing just to comfort you, and to give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me with my husband."

And then there fell between these two an infinite silence.

"Listen," de Gatinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do.

You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my one law."

But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself.

The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery about which you were just now telling my husband?"

De Gatinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he said, "It is just."

He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it, never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauleon, with a lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who doddered about the window yonder.

She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while.

THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL