The Line of Love; Dizain des Mariages Part 18

"Last night," said she, "I thought that I was strong. I know now it was my vanity that was strong,--vanity and pride and fear, Raoul, that for a little mastered me. But in the dawn all things seem very trivial, saving love alone."

They looked out into the dew-washed gardens. The daylight was fullgrown, and already the clear-cut forms of men were pa.s.sing beneath the swaying branches. In the distance a trumpet snarled.

"Dear love," said Raoul, "do you not understand that you have brought about my death? For Monsieur de Puysange is at the gates of Arnaye; and either he or Sieur Raymond will have me hanged ere noon."

"I do not know," she said, in a tired voice. "I think that Monsieur de Puysange has some cause to thank me; and my uncle loves me, and his heart, for all his gruffness, is very tender. And--see, Raoul!" She drew the dagger from her bosom. "I shall not survive you a long while, O man of all the world!"

Perplexed joy flushed through his countenance. "You will do this--for me?" he cried, with a sort of sob. "Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!"

"But I love you," said Matthiette. "How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?"

He bent to her. They kissed.

Hand in hand they went forth into the daylight. The kindly, familiar place seemed in Matthiette's eyes oppressed and transformed by the austerity of dawn. It was a clear Sunday morning, at the hightide of summer, and she found the world unutterably Sabbatical; only by a vigorous effort could memory connect it with the normal life of yesterday. The cool edges of the woods, vibrant now with mult.i.tudinous shrill pipings, the purple shadows shrinking eastward on the dimpling lawns, the intricate and broken traceries of the dial (where they had met so often), the blurred windings of their path, above which brooded the peaked roofs and gables and slender clerestories of Arnaye, the broad river yonder lapsing through deserted sunlit fields,--these things lay before them scarce heeded, stript of all perspective, flat as an open scroll. To them all this was alien. She and Raoul were quite apart from these matters, quite alone, despite the men of Arnaye, hurrying toward the courtyard, who stared at them curiously, but said nothing. A brisk wind was abroad in the tree-tops, scattering stray leaves, already dead, over the lush gra.s.s. Tenderly Raoul brushed a little golden sycamore leaf from the lovelier gold of Matthiette's hair.

"I do not know how long I have to live," he said. "n.o.body knows that. But I wish that I might live a great while to serve you worthily."

She answered: "Neither in life nor death shall we be parted now. That only matters, my husband."

They came into the crowded court-yard just as the drawbridge fell. A troop of horse clattered into Arnaye, and the leader, a young man of frank countenance, dismounted and looked about him inquiringly. Then he came toward them.

"Monseigneur," said he, "you see that we ride early in honor of your nuptials."

Behind them some one chuckled. "Love one another, young people," said Sieur Raymond; "but do you, Matthiette, make ready to depart into Normandy as a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange."

She stared into Raoul's laughing face; there was a kind of anguish in her swift comprehension. Quickly the two men who loved her glanced at each other, half in shame.

But the Sieur d'Arnaye was not lightly dashed. "Oh, la, la, la!" chuckled the Sieur d'Arnaye, "she would never have given you a second thought, monsieur le vicomte, had I not labelled you forbidden fruit. As it is, my last conspiracy, while a little ruthless, I grant you, turns out admirably. Jack has his Jill, and all ends merrily, like an old song. I will begin on those pig-sties the first thing to-morrow morning."

OCTOBER 6, 1519

_"Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world; first unto G.o.d, and next unto the joy of them that he promiseth his faith unto."_

_The quondam Raoul de Prison stood high in the graces of the Lady Regent of France, Anne de Beaujeu, who was, indeed, tolerably notorious for her partiality to well-built young men. Courtiers whispered more than there is any need here to rehea.r.s.e. In any event, when in 1485 the daughter of Louis XI fitted out an expedition to press the Earl of Richmond's claim to the English crown, de Puysange sailed from Havre as commander of the French fleet. He fought at Bosworth, not discreditably; and a year afterward, when England had for the most part accepted Henry VII, Matthiette rejoined her husband.

They never subsequently quitted England. During the long civil wars, de Puysange was known as a shrewd captain and a judicious counsellor to the King, who rewarded his services as liberally as Tudorian parsimony would permit. After the death of Henry VII, however, the vicomte took little part in public affairs, spending most of his time at Tiverton Manor, in Devon, where, surrounded by their numerous progeny, he and Matthiette grew old together in peace and concord.

Indeed, the vicomte so ordered all his cool love-affairs that, having taken a wife as a matter of expediency, he continued as a matter of expediency to make her a fair husband, as husbands go. It also seemed to him, they relate, a matter of expediency to ignore the interpretation given by scandalous persons to the paternal friendship extended to Madame de Puysange by a high prince of the Church, during the last five years of the great Cardinal Morton's life, for the connection was useful.

The following is from a ma.n.u.script of doubtful authenticity still to be seen at Allonby Shaw. It purports to contain the autobiography of Will Sommers, the vicomte's jester, afterward court-fool to Henry VIII._

CHAPTER VII

_The Episode Called The Castle of Content_

1. _I Glimpse the Castle_

"And so, dearie," she ended, "you may seize the revenues of Allonby with unwashed hands."

I said, "Why have you done this?" I was half-frightened by the sudden whirl of Dame Fortune's wheel.

"Dear cousin in motley," grinned the beldame, "'twas for hatred of Tom Allonby and all his accursed race that I have kept the secret thus long.

Now comes a braver revenge: and I settle my score with the black sp.a.w.n of Allonby--euh, how entirely!--by setting you at their head."

"Nay, I elect for a more flattering reason. I begin to suspect you, cousin, of some human compunction."

"Well, Willie, well, I never hated you as much as I had reason to," she grumbled, and began to cough very lamentably. "So at the last I must make a marquis of you--ugh! Will you jest for them in counsel, Willie, and lead your henchman to battle with a bawdy song--ugh, ugh!"

Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that would have been fanged curses had breath not failed her: for my aunt Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the attendance of divers Sabbats, and the chaunting of such songs as honest men may not hear and live, however highly the succubi and warlocks and were-cats, and Satan's courtiers generally, commend them.

I squinted down at one green leg, scratched the crimson fellow to it with my bauble, and could not deny that, even so, the witch was dealing handsomely with me to-night.

'Twas a strange tale which my Aunt Elinor had ended, speaking swiftly lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done: and the proofs of the tale's verity, set forth in a fair clerkly handwriting, rustled in my hand,--scratches of a long-rotted pen that transferred me to the right side of the blanket, and transformed the motley of a fool into the ermine of a peer.

All Devon knew I was son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Falmouth at his uncle's death, had not Tom Allonby, upon the very eve of that event, broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy Church had smiled upon Tom's union with a tanner's daughter, and that their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true,--true that I had precedence even of the great Monsieur de Puysange, who had kept me to make him mirth on a shifty diet, first coins, then curses, these ten years past,--true that my father, rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he died,--true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their secret with the priest who married them, maliciously preserving it till this, when her words fell before me as anciently Jove's shower before the Argive Danae, coruscant and awful, pregnant with undreamed-of chances which stirred as yet blindly in Time's womb.

A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ign.o.ble years this hag had suffered me to bear; yet my so young gentility bade me avoid reproach of the dying peasant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used by our house. Death hath a strange potency: commanding as he doth, unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that Cain's children wept about his deathbed, and that the centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the elder-tree: and in like manner the reproaches which stirred in my brain had no power to move my lips. The frail carnal tenement, swept and cleansed of all mortality, was garnished for Death's coming; and I could not sorrow at his advent here: but I perforce must pity rather than revile the prey which Age and Poverty, those ravenous forerunning hounds of Death yet harried, at the door of the tomb.

Running over these considerations in my mind, I said, "I forgive you."

"You posturing lack-wit!" she returned, and her sunk jaws quivered angrily. "D'ye play the condescending gentleman already! Dearie, your master did not take the news so calmly."

"You have told him?"

I had risen, for the wried, and yet sly, malice of my aunt's face was rather that of Bellona, who, as clerks avow, ever bore carnage and dissension in her train, than that of a mortal, mutton-fed woman. Elinor Sommers hated me--having G.o.d knows how just a cause--for the reason that I was my father's son; and yet, for this same reason as I think, there was in all our intercourse an odd, harsh, grudging sort of tenderness.

She laughed now,--flat and shrill, like the laughter of the d.a.m.ned heard in h.e.l.l between the roaring of flames. "Were it not common kindness to tell him, since this old sleek fellow's fine daughter is to wed the cuckoo that hath your nest? Yes, Willie, yes, your master hath known since morning."

"And Adeliza?" I asked, in a voice that tricked me.

"Heh, my Lady-High-and-Mighty hath, I think, heard nothing as yet. She will be hearing of new suitors soon enough, though, for her father, Monsieur Fine-Words, that silky, grinning thief, is very keen in a money-chase,--keen as a terrier on a rat-track, may Satan twist his neck!

Pshutt, dearie! here is a smiling knave who means to have the estate of Allonby as it stands; what live-stock may go therewith, whether crack-brained or not, is all one to him. He will not balk at a drachm or two of wit in his son-in-law. You have but to whistle,--but to whistle, Willie, and she'll come!"

I said, "Eh, woman, and have you no heart?"

"I gave it to your father for a few lying speeches," she answered, "and Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. "I gave it--" Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby!

But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. So, that is better! And now go, my lord marquis; it is not fitting that death should intrude into your lordship's presence. Go, fool, and let me die in peace!"

I no longer cast a cautious eye toward the whip (ah, familiar unkindly whip!) that still hung beside the door of the hut; but, I confess, my aunt's looks were none too delectable, and ancient custom rendered her wrath yet terrible. If the farmers thereabouts were to be trusted, I knew Old Legion's bailiff would shortly be at hand, to distrain upon a soul escheat and forfeited to Dis by many years of cruel witchcrafts, close wiles, and nameless sorceries; and I could never abide unpared nails, even though they be red-hot. Therefore, I relinquished her to the village gossips, who waited without, and I tucked my bauble under my arm.

"Dear aunt," said I, "farewell!"