Melicent said an odd thing, asking, "Oh, can it be you are a less despicable person than you are striving to appear!"
"Rather, I am a more unmitigated fool than even I suspected, since when affairs were in a promising train I have elected to blurt out, of all things, the naked and distasteful truth. Proclaim it now; and see the late Vicomte de Puysange lugged out of this hall and after appropriate torture hanged within the month." And with that Perion laughed.
Thereafter he was silent. As the masque went, Amphitryon had newly returned from warfare, and was singing under Alcmena's window in the terms of an aubade, a waking-song. "Rei glorios, verais lums e clardatz—" Amphitryon had begun. Dame Melicent heard him through.
And after many ages, as it seemed to Perion, the soft and brilliant and exquisite mouth was pricked to motion.
"You have affronted, by an incredible imposture and beyond the reach of mercy, every listener in this hall. You have injured me most deeply of all persons here. Yet it is to me alone that you confess."
Perion leaned forward. You are to understand that, through the incurrent necessities of every circumstance, each of them spoke in whispers, even now. It was curious to note the candid mirth on either side. Mercury was making his adieux to Alcmena's waiting-woman in the middle of a jig.
"But you," sneered Perion, "are merciful in all things. Rogue that I am, I dare to build on this notorious fact. I am snared in a hard golden trap, I cannot get a guide to Manneville, I cannot even procure a horse from Count Emmerick's stables without arousing fatal suspicions; and I must be at Manneville by dawn or else be hanged. Therefore I dare stake all upon one throw; and you must either save or hang me with unwashed hands. As surely as God reigns, my future rests with you. And as I am perfectly aware, you could not live comfortably with a gnat's death upon your conscience. Eh, am I not a seasoned rascal?"
"Do not remind me now that you are vile," said Melicent. "Ah, no, not now!"
"Lackey, impostor, and thief!" he sternly answered. "There you have the catalogue of all my rightful titles. And besides, it pleases me, for a reason I cannot entirely fathom, to be unpardonably candid and to fling my destiny into your lap. To-night, as I have said, the Tranchemer lies off Manneville; keep counsel, get me a horse if you will, and to-morrow I am embarked for desperate service under the harried Kaiser of the Greeks, and for throat-cuttings from which I am not likely ever to return. Speak, and I hang before the month is up."
Dame Melicent looked at him now, and within the moment Perion was repaid, and bountifully, for every folly and misdeed of his entire life.
"What harm have I ever done you, Messire de la Forêt, that you should shame me in this fashion? Until to-night I was not unhappy in the belief I was loved by you. I may say that now without paltering, since you are not the man I thought some day to love. You are but the rind of him. And you would force me to cheat justice, to become a hunted thief's accomplice, or else to murder you!"
"It comes to that, madame."
"Then I must help you preserve your life by any sorry stratagems you may devise. I shall not hinder you. I will procure you a guide to Manneville. I will even forgive you all save one offence, since doubtless heaven made you the foul thing you are." The girl was in a hot and splendid rage. "For you love me. Women know. You love me. You!"
"Undoubtedly, madame."
"Look into my face! and say what horrid writ of infamy you fancied was apparent there, that my nails may destroy it."
"I am all base," he answered, "and yet not so profoundly base as you suppose. Nay, believe me, I had never hoped to win even such scornful kindness as you might accord your lapdog. I have but dared to peep at heaven while I might, and only as lost Dives peeped. Ignoble as I am, I never dreamed to squire an angel down toward the mire and filth which is henceforward my inevitable kennel."
"The masque is done," said Melicent, "and yet you talk, and talk, and talk, and mimic truth so cunningly—Well, I will send some trusty person to you. And now, for God's sake!—nay, for the fiend's love who is your patron!—let me not ever see you again, Messire de la Forêt."
2. How the Vicomte Was Very Gay
There was dancing afterward and a sumptuous supper. The Vicomte de Puysange was generally accounted that evening the most excellent of company. He mingled affably with the revellers and found a prosperous answer for every jest they broke upon the projected marriage of Dame Melicent and King Theodoret; and meanwhile hugged the reflection that half the realm was hunting Perion de la Forêt in the more customary haunts of rascality. The springs of Perion's turbulent mirth were that to-morrow every person in the room would discover how impudently every person had been tricked, and that Melicent deliberated even now, and could not but admire, the hunted outlaw's insolence, however much she loathed its perpetrator; and over this thought in particular Perion laughed like a madman.
"You are very gay to-night, Messire de Puysange," said the Bishop of Montors.
This remarkable young man, it is necessary to repeat, had reached Bellegarde that evening, coming from Brunbelois. It was he (as you have heard) who had arranged the match with Theodoret. The bishop himself loved his cousin Melicent; but, now that he was in holy orders and possession of her had become impossible, he had cannily resolved to utilise her beauty, as he did everything else, toward his own preferment.
"Oh, sir," replied Perion, "you who are so fine a poet must surely know that gay rhymes with to-day as patly as sorrow goes with to-morrow."
"Yet your gay laughter, Messire de Puysange, is after all but breath: and breath also"—the bishop's sharp eyes fixed Perion's—"has a hackneyed rhyme."
"Indeed, it is the grim rhyme that rounds off and silences all our rhyming," Perion assented. "I must laugh, then, without rhyme or reason."
Still the young prelate talked rather oddly. "But," said he, "you have an excellent reason, now that you sup so near to heaven." And his glance at Melicent did not lack pith.
"No, no, I have quite another reason," Perion answered; "it is that to-morrow I breakfast in hell."
"Well, they tell me the landlord of that place is used to cater to each according to his merits," the bishop, shrugging, returned.
And Perion thought how true this was when, at the evening's end, he was alone in his own room. His life was tolerably secure. He trusted Ahasuerus the Jew to see to it that, about dawn, one of the ship's boats would touch at Fomor Beach near Manneville, according to their old agreement. Aboard the Tranchemer the Free Companions awaited their captain; and the savage land they were bound for was a thought beyond the reach of a kingdom's lamentable curiosity concerning the whereabouts of King Helmas' treasure. The worthless life of Perion was safe.
For worthless, and far less than worthless, life seemed to Perion as he thought of Melicent and waited for her messenger. He thought of her beauty and purity and illimitable loving-kindness toward every person in the world save only Perion of the Forest. He thought of how clean she was in every thought and deed; of that, above all, he thought, and he knew that he would never see her any more.