Melior put the sleeping child into the cradle yonder, a cradle which Florian supposed that Hoprig must have created extempore and miraculously when a cradle was needed. It hardly seemed the most natural appurtenance of an anchorite’s retreat.
Then Melior turned, and she regarded Florian with her maddening air of dealing very patiently with an irrational person.
“Do you actually think, Florian, that, now, you can harm the little pet? Florian, that is one fault you have, though I am far from saying it is the only one. Still, as I so often think, no one of us is perfect: and perpetual fault-finding never gets you anywhere, does it? Even so, Florian, there is no denying you do not like to take a common-sense view of the most self-evident facts when the facts are not quite what you want them to be, and that much I feel I ought to tell you frankly. Otherwise, Florian, you would comprehend at once that I have only to cry out to St. Hoprig, who is back yonder chopping the wood to cook our supper, after those cherubs were positively rude about being asked to do it, and then he will blast you with a miracle.”
She had gone back to her outlandish mediaeval clothing. He recognized, now, the dreadful gown she was wearing the morning he first came to her upon the mountain top,—that glaring, shiny, twinkling affair, which reminded you of an Opera dancer’s costume in some spectacular ballet. For a Duchess of Puysange to be thus preposterously attired was unbecoming, and was in quite abominable taste.
“First, madame,” said Florian, with a vexed, rather tired sigh, “let us explain matters. I have loved you since my boyhood, Melior, with a love which no woman, I think, can understand. For I loved you worshipfully, without hope, without any actual desire: and I loved you, by ill-luck, with a whole-heartedness which has prevented my ever loving anything else. It is droll that a little color and glitter and a few plump curves, seen once and very briefly, should be able to make all other things not quite worth troubling about. But the farce is old. They used to call us nympholepts; and they fabled that the beauty which robbed us of all normal human joys was divine. Well, I have no desire to discuss the nature of divinity, madame, nor to bore you with any further talking about what no woman understands. It suffices that I loved you in this pre-eminently ridiculous fashion; and that a way was offered me by which I might very incredibly win to you.”
To which Melior replied: “You mean about your bargaining with Janicot, I suppose, and I am sure I never heard of such nonsense in my life. Why, Florian, to think that the moment I let you out of my sight, even if it was a little while before I first actually saw you, because that does not in the least alter the principle of the thing,—quite apart from its happening the same morning, anyhow,—that you should be mixing yourself up with such people! It is positively incredible! But, as for your supposing that I am going to let you and your Janicots lay one finger on my precious lamb—!”
“Madame,” he replied, “let us be logical! I can conceive of no possible reason why you should especially value this child. It may be no more repulsive looking than other babies: that is a point upon which I cannot pretend to speak with authority. But it is certainly not in itself an attractive animal. And your acquaintance with it, dating only from this morning, is far too brief to have permitted the forming of any personal attachment. For the rest, this bargain with Monsieur Janicot is an affair in which I have given my word. I can say no more. It is in your power, of course, to summon my patron saint, who, from what I know of him, will probably attempt to coerce me into rank dishonesty; and in that case the issue remains doubtful. The most probable outcome—need I say ?—in view of his boasted proficiency in blasting, cursing and smiting, seems my annihilation. Would you, madame, who are of royal blood and are born of a race that is more than human,—would you have me, on that account, hold back in an affair in which my honor is involved ?”
“Why, Florian, since you are asking my advice, I think it is not quite nice to speak of the power of a saint as being at all doubtful. We both know perfectly well that he would resent any impudence from you with a palsy or an advanced case of leprosy or perhaps a thunderbolt, and make things most unpleasant for everybody. And besides, it is just as well to avoid the subject of doubtfulness, because after talking with your other wives, I confess, Florian, that I have the very gravest doubts as to what you are planning to have become of me.”
“You will vanish, madame, after the usual custom of your race. I am sure I do not know whither the Leshy usually vanish.”
“I decline to vanish. Now that I am a Christian, Florian, I should think that even you would know I must decline to take any part in any such silly and irreligious proceedings—”
To which he answered patiently, “But I have given my word, madame.”
And still this obstinate woman clung to her pretence that he was behaving irrationally. She said, with an effect of being almost sorry for him:
“My poor Florian! now but let us be perfectly friendly about this. I am disposed to bear no malice, because, as I so often think, what is the odds? In the long run, I mean—”
“Madame, it is my misfortune never quite to know what you mean.”
“Why, I mean that we all make mistakes, and that it is to be expected, and the least said about it, the soonest mended. Besides, as I was telling you, I do not know of course who it was that first set women upon a pedestal, and even if I did, I would be willing to overlook his mistakes too—”
“But you have not been telling me about this over-imaginative unmarried person! You were talking about malice and vanishing—”
“—Still, I certainly would not thank him, because I have had to pay for that mistake, even more heavily than women do now. Ah, Florian, as I so often think, it is always the woman who pays! For, you conceive, in my first life, back at Brunbelois, I mean, in those perfectly awful days of chivalry, I used to be worshipped, or at least that was what it came to in practise, as a symbol of heavenly excellence—”
Florian said, with an attempt at gallantry, “I can well imagine—”
“Oh, it was without any actually personal application, you understand: it was just that all ladies were regarded in that light. It was considered that in making women Heaven had revealed the full extent of Heaven’s powers. So they made us sit upon uncomfortable thrones at their tournaments—”
“But,” Florian protested, “these honorable and extremely picturesque customs—”
“My dear, that is all very well! but they used to last for a week sometimes. And there we would have to sit, from six to seven hours a day, with canopies but no cushions, and with no toilet conveniences, and with nothing whatever to do except to watch them sticking and poking and chopping one another in order to show how they respected us,—though I could never understand just how that came in, because my back hurt me too much, apart from my other troubles—”
“But as a symbol—” This horrible woman seemed resolved to leave him no one last shred of his dream.
“It was not the symbolism I objected to, Florian, but the endless inconvenience. The tournaments were only a part of it; and of course even after them you could get liniment, and you soon learned not to drink anything with your breakfast. But they walked off with your sleeves and handkerchiefs, with or without your leave: and when you go to put on your gloves, let me tell you, it is most annoying to find that the other one is several miles away in somebody’s helmet—”
“Now,” Florian said, yet more and more shocked, “you illogically apply prosaic standards to the entirely poetic attitude of chivalry—”