Folle Farine Part 79

"Is this Rioz?" She could not comprehend; a horror seized her, lest she should have strayed from Paris back into her mother's province.

"No. It is another home of mine; smaller, but choicer maybe. Who has cut your hair close?"

She shuddered and turned paler with the memory of that ghastly prison-house.

"Well; I am not sure but that you are handsomer,--almost. A sculptor would like you more now,--what a head you would make for an Anteros, or an Icarus, or a Hyacinthus! Yes--you are best so. You have been ill?"

She could not answer; she only stared at him, blankly, with sad, mindless, dilated eyes.

"A little gold!" she muttered, "a little gold!"

He looked at her awhile, then rose and went and sent his handwomen, who took her to an inner chamber, and bathed and attended her with a.s.siduous care. She was stupefied, and knew not what they did.

They served her tenderly. They bathed her tired limbs and laid her, as gently as though she were some wounded royal captive, upon a couch of down.

She had no force to resist. Her eyes were heavy, and her senses were obscured. The potence of the draught which they had forced through her lips, when she had been insensible, acted on her as an anodyne. She sank back unconsciously, and she slept again, all through the night and half the day that followed.

Through all the hours she was conscious at intervals of the fragrance of flowers, of the gleams of silver and gold, of the sounds of distant music, of the white, calm gaze of marble fauns and dryads, who gazed on her from amidst the coolness of hanging foliage. She who had never rested on any softer couch than her truss of hay or heap of bracken, dreamed that she slept on roses. The fragrance of innumerable flowers breathed all around her. A distant music came through the silence on her drowsy ear. For the first time in her life of toil and pain she knew how exquisite a pleasure mere repose can be.

At noon she awoke, crying aloud that the Red Mouse claimed her soul from Thanatos.

When her vision cleared, and her dream pa.s.sed away, the music, the flowers, the color, the coolness, were all real around her. She was lying on a couch as soft as the rose-beds of Sybaris. About her were the luxuries and the graces amidst which the rich dwell. Above her head, from a golden height, a painted Eros smiled.

The light, on to which her startled eyes opened, came to her veiled through soft, rosy hues; the blossom of flowers met her everywhere; gilded lattices, and precious stones, and countless things for which she knew neither the name nor use, and wondrous plants, with birds like living blossoms on the wing above them, and the marble heads of women, rising cold and pure above the dreamy shadows, all the color, and the charm, and the silence, and the grace of the life that is rounded by wealth were around her.

She lay silent and breathless awhile, with wide-open eyes, motionless from the languor of her weakness and the confusion of her thoughts, wondering dully, whether she belonged to the hosts of the living or the dead.

She was in a small sleeping-chamber, in a bed like the cup of a lotos; there was perfect silence round her, except for the faint far-off echo of some music; a drowsy subtle fragrance filled the air, the solemn measure of a clock's pendulum deepened the sense of stillness; for the first time in her life she learned how voluptuous a thing the enjoyment of simple rest can be. All her senses were steeped in it, lulled by it, magnetized by it; and, so far as every thought was conscious to her, she thought that this was death--death amidst the fields of asphodel, and in the eternal peace of the realm of Thanatos.

Suddenly her eyes fell on a familiar thing, a little picture close at hand, the picture of herself amidst the poppies.

She leapt from her bed and fell before it, and clasped it in her arms, and wept over it and kissed it, because it had been the work of his hand, and prayed to the unknown G.o.ds to make her suffer all things in his stead, and to give him the desire of his soul. And the Red Mouse had no power on her, because of her great love.

She rose from that prayer with her mind clear, and her nerves strung from the lengthened repose; she remembered all that had chanced to her.

"Where are my clothes?" she muttered to the serving-woman who watched beside her. "It is broad day;--I must go on;--to Paris."

They craved her to wear the costly and broidered stuffs strewn around her; masterpieces of many an Eastern and Southern loom; but she put them all aside in derision and impatience, drawing around her with a proud loving action the folds of her own poor garments. Weather-stained, torn by bush and brier, soaked with night-dew, and discolored by the dye of many a crushed flower and bruised berry of the fields and woods, she yet would not have exchanged these poor shreds of woven flax and goats' wool against imperial robes, for, poor though they were, they were the symbols of her independence and her liberty.

The women tended her gently, and pressed on her many rare and fair things, but she would not have them; she took a cup of milk, and pa.s.sed out into the larger chamber.

She was troubled and bewildered, but she had no fear; for she was too innocent, too wearied, and too desperate with that deathless courage, which, having borne the worst that fate can do, can know no dread.

She stood with her arms folded on her breast, drawing together the tattered folds of the tunic, gazing at the riches and the luxury, and the blended colors of the room. So softly that she never heard his footfall, the old man entered behind her, and came to the hearth, and looked on her.

"You are better?" he asked. "Are you better, Folle-Farine?"

She looked up, and met the eyes of Sartorian. They smiled again on her with the smile of the Red Mouse.

The one pa.s.sion which consumed her was stronger than any fear or any other memory: she only thought----this man must know?

She sprang forward and grasped his arm with both hands, with the seizure of a tigress; her pa.s.sionate eyes searched his face; her voice came hard and fast.

"What have you done?--is he living or dead?--you must know?"

His eyes still smiled:

"I gave him his golden key;--how he should use it, that was not in our bond? But, truly, I will make another bond with you any day, Folle-Farine."

She shuddered, and her hands dropped from their hold.

"You know nothing?" she murmured.

"Of your Norse G.o.d? nay, nothing. An eagle soars too high for a man's sight to follow, you know--oftentimes."

And he laughed his little soft laugh.

The eagles often soared so high--so high--that the icy vapors of the empyrean froze them dead, and they dropped to earth a mere bruised, helpless, useless ma.s.s:--he knew.

She stood stunned and confused: her horror of Sartorian was struggling into life through the haze in which all things of the past were still shrouded to her dulled remembrance--all things, save her love.

"Rest awhile," he said, gently. "Rest; and we may--who knows?--learn something of your Northern G.o.d. First, tell me of yourself. I have sought for tidings of you vainly."

Her eyes glanced round her on every side.

"Let me go," she muttered.

"Nay--a moment yet. You are not well."

"I am well."

"Indeed? Then wait a moment."

She rested where he motioned; he looked at her in smiling wonder.

She leaned on one of the cushioned couches, calm, motionless, negligent, giving no sign that she saw the chamber round her to be any other than the wooden barn or thatched cattle-sheds of the old mill-house; her feet were crossed, her limbs were folded in that exquisite repose which is inborn in races of the East; the warmth of the room and the long hours of sleep had brought the natural bloom to her face, the natural l.u.s.ter to her eyes, which earlier fatigue and long illness had banished.

He surveyed her with that smile which she had resented on the day when she had besought pity of him for Arslan's sake.

"Do you not eat?" was all he said.

"Not here."

He laughed, his low humorous laugh that displeased her so bitterly, though it was soft of tone.

"And all those silks, and stuffs, and laces--do they please you no better?"

"They are not mine."