"Undoubtedly," said Sieur Raymond,—"Arnaye must perish unless Puysange prove her friend. Therefore, my niece conquers her natural aversion to a young and wealthy husband, and a life of comfort and flattery and gayety; relinquishes you, Raoul; and, like a feminine Mettius Curtius, sacrifices herself to her country's welfare. Pierre may sleep undisturbed; and the pigs will have a new sty. My faith, it is quite affecting! And so," Sieur Raymond summed it up, "you two young fools may bid adieu, once for all, while I contemplate this tapestry." He strolled to the end of the room and turned his back. "Admirable!" said he; "really now, that leopard is astonishingly lifelike!"
Raoul came toward Matthiette. "Dear love," said he, "you have chosen wisely, and I bow to your decision. Farewell, Matthiette,—O indomitable heart! O brave perfect woman that I have loved! Now at the last of all, I praise you for your charity to me, Love's mendicant,—ah, believe me, Matthiette, that atones for aught which follows now. Come what may, I shall always remember that once in old days you loved me, and, remembering this, I shall always thank God with a contented heart." He bowed over her unresponsive hand. "Matthiette," he whispered, "be happy! For I desire that very heartily, and I beseech of our Sovereign Lady—not caring to hide at all how my voice shakes, nor how the loveliness of you, seen now for the last time, is making blind my eyes—that you may never know unhappiness. You have chosen wisely, Matthiette; yet, ah, my dear, do not forget me utterly, but keep always a little place in your heart for your boy lover!"
Sieur Raymond concluded his inspection of the tapestry, and turned with a premonitory cough. "Thus ends the comedy," said he, shrugging, "with much fine, harmless talking about 'always,' while the world triumphs. Invariably the world triumphs, my children. Eheu, we are as God made us, we men and women that cumber His stately earth!" He drew his arm through Raoul's. "Farewell, niece," said Sieur Raymond, smiling; "I rejoice that you are cured of your malady. Now in respect to gerfalcons—" said he. The arras fell behind them.
3. Obdurate Love
Matthiette sat brooding in her room, as the night wore on. She was pitifully frightened, numb. There was in the room, she dimly noted, a heavy silence that sobs had no power to shatter. Dimly, too, she seemed aware of a multitude of wide, incurious eyes which watched her from every corner, where panels snapped at times with sharp echoes. The night was well-nigh done when she arose.
"After all," she said, wearily, "it is my manifest duty." Matthiette crept to the mirror and studied it.
"Madame de Puysange," said she, without any intonation; then threw her arms above her head, with a hard gesture of despair. "I love him!" she cried, in a frightened voice.
Matthiette went to a great chest and fumbled among its contents. She drew out a dagger in a leather case, and unsheathed it. The light shone evilly scintillant upon the blade. She laughed, and hid it in the bosom of her gown, and fastened a cloak about her with impatient fingers. Then Matthiette crept down the winding stair that led to the gardens, and unlocked the door at the foot of it.
A sudden rush of night swept toward her, big with the secrecy of dawn. The sky, washed clean of stars, sprawled above,—a leaden, monotonous blank. Many trees whispered thickly over the chaos of earth; to the left, in an increasing dove-colored luminousness, a field of growing maize bristled like the chin of an unshaven Titan.
Matthiette entered an expectant world. Once in the tree-chequered gardens, it was as though she crept through the aisles of an unlit cathedral already garnished for its sacred pageant. Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above; the margin of night was thick with their petulant complaints; behind her was the monstrous shadow of the Chateau d'Arnaye, and past that was a sullen red, the red of contused flesh, to herald dawn. Infinity waited a-tiptoe, tense for the coming miracle, and against this vast repression, her grief dwindled into irrelevancy: the leaves whispered comfort; each tree-bole hid chuckling fauns. Matthiette laughed. Content had flooded the universe all through and through now that yonder, unseen as yet, the scarlet-faced sun was toiling up the rim of the world, and matters, it somehow seemed, could not turn out so very ill, in the end.
Matthiette came to a hut, from whose open window a faded golden glow spread out into obscurity like a tawdry fan. From without she peered into the hut and saw Raoul. A lamp flickered upon the table. His shadow twitched and wavered about the plastered walls,—a portentous mass of head upon a hemisphere of shoulders,—as Raoul bent over a chest, sorting the contents, singing softly to himself, while Matthiette leaned upon the sill without, and the gardens of Arnaye took form and stirred in the heart of a chill, steady, sapphire-like radiance.
Sang Raouclass="underline"
4. Raymond Psychopompos
Matthiette went to the hut's door: her hands fell irresolutely upon the rough surface of it and lay still for a moment. Then with the noise of a hoarse groan the door swung inward, and the light guttered in a swirl of keen morning air, casting convulsive shadows upon her lifted countenance, and was extinguished. She held out her arms in a gesture that was half maternal. "Raoul!" she murmured.
He turned. A sudden bird plunged through the twilight without, with a glad cry that pierced like a knife through the stillness which had fallen in the little room. Raoul de Frison faced her, with clenched hands, silent. For that instant she saw him transfigured.
But his silence frightened her. There came a piteous catch in her voice.
"Fair friend, have you not bidden me—be happy?"
He sighed. "Mademoiselle," he said, dully, "I may not avail myself of your tenderness of heart; that you have come to comfort me in my sorrow is a deed at which, I think, God's holy Angels must rejoice: but I cannot avail myself of it."
"Raoul, Raoul," she said, "do you think that I have come in—pity!"
"Matthiette," he returned, "your uncle spoke the truth. I have dreamed dreams concerning you,—dreams of a foolish, golden-hearted girl, who would yield—yield gladly—all that the world may give, to be one flesh and soul with me. But I have wakened, dear, to the braver reality,—that valorous woman, strong enough to conquer even her own heart that her people may be freed from their peril."