"Oh, but past any doubting," said Perion, "the devil caters to each according to his merits."
3. How Melicent Wooed
Then Perion knew that vain regret had turned his brain, very certainly, for it seemed the door had opened and Dame Melicent herself had come, warily, into the panelled gloomy room. It seemed that Melicent paused in the convulsive brilliancy of the firelight, and stayed thus with vaguely troubled eyes like those of a child newly wakened from sleep.
And it seemed a long while before she told Perion very quietly that she had confessed all to Ayrart de Montors, and had, by reason of de Montors' love for her, so goaded and allured the outcome of their talk—"ignobly," as she said,—that a clean-handed gentleman would come at three o'clock for Perion de la Forêt, and guide a thief toward unmerited impunity. All this she spoke quite levelly, as one reads aloud from a book; and then, with a signal change of voice, Melicent said: "Yes, that is true enough. Yet why, in reality, do you think I have in my own person come to tell you of it?"
"Madame, I may not guess. Hah, indeed, indeed," Perion cried, because he knew the truth and was unspeakably afraid, "I dare not guess!"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea——" she began, but her sweet voice trailed and died into silence. He heard the crepitations of the fire, and even the hurried beatings of his own heart, as against a terrible and lovely hush of all created life. "Then take me with you."
Perion had never any recollection of what he answered. Indeed, he uttered no communicative words, but only foolish babblements.
"Oh, I do not understand," said Melicent. "It is as though some spell were laid upon me. Look you, I have been cleanly reared, I have never wronged any person that I know of, and throughout my quiet, sheltered life I have loved truth and honour most of all. My judgment grants you to be what you are confessedly. And there is that in me more masterful and surer than my judgment, that which seems omniscient and lightly puts aside your confessings as unimportant."
"Lackey, impostor, and thief!" young Perion answered. "There you have the catalogue of all my rightful titles fairly earned."
"And even if I believed you, I think I would not care! Is that not strange? For then I should despise you. And even then, I think, I would fling my honour at your feet, as I do now, and but in part with loathing, I would still entreat you to make of me your wife, your servant, anything that pleased you . . . . Oh, I had thought that when love came it would be sweet!"
Strangely quiet, in every sense, he answered:
"It is very sweet. I have known no happier moment in my life. For you stand within arm's reach, mine to touch, mine to possess and do with as I elect. And I dare not lift a finger. I am as a man that has lain for a long while in a dungeon vainly hungering for the glad light of day—who, being freed at last, must hide his eyes from the dear sunlight he dare not look upon as yet. Ho, I am past speech unworthy of your notice! and I pray you now speak harshly with me, madame, for when your pure eyes regard me kindly, and your bright and delicate lips have come thus near to mine, I am so greatly tempted and so happy that I fear lest heaven grow jealous!"
"Be not too much afraid—" she murmured.
"Nay, should I then be bold? and within the moment wake Count Emmerick to say to him, very boldly, 'Beau sire, the thief half Christendom is hunting has the honour to request your sister's hand in marriage'?"
"You sail to-morrow for the fighting oversea. Take me with you."
"Indeed the feat would be worthy of me. For you are a lady tenderly nurtured and used to every luxury the age affords. There comes to woo you presently an excellent and potent monarch, not all unworthy of your love, who will presently share with you many happy and honourable years. Yonder is a lawless naked wilderness where I and my fellow desperadoes hope to cheat offended justice and to preserve thrice-forfeited lives in savagery. You bid me aid you to go into this country, never to return! Madame, if I obeyed you, Satan would protest against pollution of his ageless fires by any soul so filthy."
"You talk of little things, whereas I think of great things. Love is not sustained by palatable food alone, and is not served only by those persons who go about the world in satin."
"Then take the shameful truth. It is undeniable I swore I loved you, and with appropriate gestures, too. But, dompnedex, madame! I am past master in these specious ecstasies, for somehow I have rarely seen the woman who had not some charm or other to catch my heart with. I confess now that you alone have never quickened it. My only purpose was through hyperbole to wheedle you out of a horse, and meanwhile to have my recreation, you handsome jade!—and that is all you ever meant to me. I swear to you that is all, all, all!" sobbed Perion, for it appeared that he must die. "I have amused myself with you, I have abominably tricked you—"
Melicent only waited with untroubled eyes which seemed to plumb his heart and to appraise all which Perion had ever thought or longed for since the day that Perion was born; and she was as beautiful, it seemed to him, as the untroubled, gracious angels are, and more compassionate.
"Yes," Perion said, "I am trying to lie to you. And even at lying I fail."
She said, with a wonderful smile:
"Assuredly there were never any other persons so mad as we. For I must do the wooing, as though you were the maid, and all the while you rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no better than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I believe none of your accusers. Perion de la Forêt," said Melicent, and ballad-makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her voice, "I know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than an archangel has pilfered drying linen from a hedgerow. I do not guess, for my hour is upon me, and inevitably I know! and there is nothing dares to come between us now."
"Nay,—ho, and even were matters as you suppose them, without any warrant,—there is at least one silly stumbling knave that dares as much. Saith he: 'What is the most precious thing in the world?—Why, assuredly, Dame Melicent's welfare. Let me get the keeping of it, then. For I have been entrusted with a host of common priceless things—with youth and vigour and honour, with a clean conscience and a child's faith, and so on—and no person alive has squandered them more gallantly. So heartward ho! and trust me now, my timorous yoke-fellow, to win and squander also the chiefest jewel of the world.' Eh, thus he chuckles and nudges me, with wicked whisperings. Indeed, madame, this rascal that shares equally in my least faculty is a most pitiful, ignoble rogue! and he has aforetime eked out our common livelihood by such practices as your unsullied imagination could scarcely depicture. Until I knew you I had endured him. But you have made of him a horror. A horror, a horror! a thing too pitiful for hell!"
Perion turned away from her, groaning. He flung himself into a chair.
He screened his eyes as if before some physical abomination.
The girl kneeled close to him, touching him.
"My dear, my dear! then slay for me this other Perion of the Forest."
And Perion laughed, not very mirthfully.
"It is the common usage of women to ask of men this little labour, which is a harder task than ever Hercules, that mighty-muscled king of heathenry, achieved. Nay, I, for all my sinews, am an attested weakling. The craft of other men I do not fear, for I have encountered no formidable enemy save myself; but that same midnight stabber unhorsed me long ago. I had wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came…. Ah, child, child! why needed you to trouble me! for to-night I want to be clean as you are clean, and that I may not ever be. I am garrisoned with devils, I am the battered plaything of every vice, and I lack the strength, and it may be, even the will, to leave my mire. Always I have betrayed the stewardship of man and god alike that my body might escape a momentary discomfort! And loving you as I do, I cannot swear that in the outcome I would not betray you too, to this same end! I cannot swear—Oh, now let Satan laugh, yet not unpitifully, since he and I, alone, know all the reasons why I may not swear! Hah, Madame Melicent!" cried Perion, in his great agony, "you offer me that gift an emperor might not accept save in awed gratitude; and I refuse it." Gently he raised her to her feet. "And now, in God's name, go, madame, and leave the prodigal among his husks."