Chapter 4

"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gâtinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I to deduce from this?"

The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue. But once they are struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of God,--they are astonishingly fruitful in good works."

The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though you will never know it,--and I hate you a little,--and I envy you a great deal."

"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never quick-witted,--"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride southward."

The page then said, "What is her name?"

Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise."

"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy her."

In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other fled.

Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves.

"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair." And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting.

Sang Miguel:

"Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.

"Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. 'Vanity of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love seems very far away to-night, though I might be with her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.

"At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden path.

"She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the Hörselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden path"

Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang.

Sang the Prince:

"I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names. And one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the significance of these things, and he went astray to gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path."

"He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden path.

"He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated whether they were the eyes of God or gases which burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.

"And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for I had walked in the trodden path."

Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince."

"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,--or to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate."

"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you."

The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my Little Miguel."

Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!" the boy wailed in the darkness.

And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said:

"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people, she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing."

The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of God:

"Dame, je n'ose, Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose, En qui li filz Diex se repose,"

and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a woman--!"

So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang half as if in defiance.

Sang Miguel:

"And still,--whatever years impend To witness Time a fickle friend, And Youth a dwindling fire,-- I must adore till all years end My first love, Heart's Desire.

"I may not hear men speak of her Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir To greet her passing-by, And I, in all her worshipper Must serve her till I die.

"For I remember: this is she That reigns in one man's memory Immune to age and fret, And stays the maid I may not see Nor win to, nor forget."

It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other.

Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauléon, on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered over the remnants of their meal.

Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had lodged there for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one, doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was very much afraid of his gigantic patron.

"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness that was ingratiating.

The host shuddered and obeyed.

Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there.

De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He, too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de Gâtinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, illimitable surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which dwarfed comprehension.

"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so that my Etienne may die unshamed!"

"I must question, messire," de Gâtinais was saying, "whether you have been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now! be advised by me, messire--"

Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk."

"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; to you she is nothing."

"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we of England."

"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gâtinais spat at him, viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the corner-stone.

"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted. I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded. England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance.

On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gâtinais, more deeply than you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then cry quits, Messire de Gâtinais, and afterward part in peace, and in common repentance."

"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gâtinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end of this."

De Gâtinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part. Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three weeks she has been tramping God knows whither or in what company--"

He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided."

De Gâtinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the world?"

"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes."

"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an orange already squeezed--quite dry, messire."

"Face of God!" the Prince said.

But de Gâtinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish. In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our blood flow like this flagon's contents?"

"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing as base as you."

De Gâtinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head striking one leg of the table.

"A candle!" de Gâtinais cried, and he panted now--"a hundred candles to the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of England.

The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound. Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share the world with a thing as base as you!"

In silence de Gâtinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered.

"_I was eloquent, I was magnificent_" she said, "_so that in the end her reserve was shattered!_ Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you--I know not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed.

"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gâtinais replied; "for as God reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, and my shame is very bitter."

She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that."

"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope of you vanish, all hope of Sicily--in effect, I lied as a cornered beast spits out his venom."

"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gâtinais, you and I are not strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things of life. But this man can enjoy--enjoy, mark you--the commission of any act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become all which he loves--since he loves it,--and that I be in thought and deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through."

"You love him!" said de Gâtinais.

She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of me--heart, soul, and body--may be longing just to comfort you, and to give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me with my husband."

And then there fell between these two an infinite silence.

"Listen," de Gâtinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do. You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my one law."

But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself. The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery about which you were just now telling my husband?"

De Gâtinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he said, "It is just."

He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it, never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauléon, with a lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who doddered about the window yonder.

She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while.

THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL

III

THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP

"Leixant a part le stil dels trobados, Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa, Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa: Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos."

THE THIRD NOVEL.--MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS IT.

_The Story of the Rat-Trap_

In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before this time.

The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural son by Hawise Bulmer.

The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where sat King Philippe.

The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary.

"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe."

With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard answer before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador.