Part 5

In this wise they reached the Chateau, and Laure came to her own again. She found herself surrounded by every one and everything that she had so unspeakably yearned for; and—they made little impression on her. She walked among them like one in a dream, striving in vain to free her mind from its encompassing mists. When she was alone with her mother, in Eleanore’s familiar and beloved room, Laure felt in herself an inexplicable insincerity. She clung to madame, and wept, and kissed her, and expressed in eager, disjointed phrases the great joy she felt in being at home again; and all the while she scarce knew what she said, or wherefore she said it. And in the end she gave such an impression of hysteria that her mother became seriously distressed.

At dinner Laure’s manner changed. She was quiet and silent, and kept her eyes fixed continually on her plate. Her cheeks were burning and she was in a tumult of inward emotion that displayed itself in the most unwonted stupidity. Her mother never dreamed the reason for her mood. Curiously enough, Alixe read Laure better, though she scarcely dared admit to herself that which she saw. No look of Flammecœur’s, nor quick flush of the young nun’s face escaped her eyes, yet neither then nor ever after did Alixe confess to any one what she read; for her own heart was too much wrought upon for speech.

Dinner ended, and with that end came the hour for Laure’s return to the convent. The girl realized this with a chill at her heart, but accepted the inevitable resignedly. It was with a sense of desolation that she followed Eloise out of the Castle to the courtyard where their horses were waiting. Her parting with her mother was filled with grief of the sincerest kind. She wept and clung to Madame Eleanore, gasping out convulsive promises to return as soon as the rule permitted. She said good-bye to Alixe as tenderly as to her mother, for the two maidens were fast friends; she kissed all the demoiselles, was kissed by the young squires-at-arms; and it was a sudden relief to her, in this rush of home-feeling, that Flammecœur was nowhere to be seen, he and Yvain having disappeared immediately after dinner.

Much to the satisfaction of Eloise, who endured a good deal of discomfort when she was in high places, Laure finally mounted her palfrey, and the two of them started away, waving good-byes all across the courtyard and drawbridge, and indeed until Eleanore, leaning heavily on Alixe’s arm, turned to re-enter the Castle.

The nuns began their descent of the long hill at a slow, jogging trot; and presently Eloise remarked comfortably,—

“Reverend Mother enjoined us to repeat the hours as we ride. But so didst thou gallop on the way hither, Sister Angelique, and so out of breath was I with trotting after, that I said no more than the first part of one Ave. Therefore let us return at a more seemly pace, that we may rightly tell our beads,” and the stolid sister settled her horse into a slower walk, and sighed comprehensively as she thought of the dinner she had eaten and the sweetmeats that were hidden in her tunic.

Laure did not answer her. She fingered her rosary dutifully, and her lips mechanically repeated the prayers. But her thoughts were no more on what she said than they were upon food. Her face was drawn and whiter even than its wont, and she sat her horse with a weary air. She was making no struggle against the inevitable. In her soul she knew that she must be strong enough to endure her lot; but she could make no pretence to herself that that lot was pleasant.

The two were a long time in their descent of the hill, and it was mid-afternoon when they reached the bend in the road that hid the Chateau from sight. Laure was not looking ahead; rather, when she looked, her eyes noticed nothing. But suddenly Eloise started from her prayers and uttered an exclamation: “Saints of God! There is that man again!”

A quick, cold tremor passed over Laure, and she trembled violently. There in the road, fifty yards away, both of them on horseback, were Flammecœur and his page.

Eloise began a series of weak and rapid expostulations. Laure sat like a statue in her saddle. Nothing was done till the two young women came abreast of the troubadour and his boy. Then, with a rapid and adroit movement, young Yvain wheeled his horse between Laure and Eloise, and presently fell back with Eloise’s animal beside him, while Bertrand Flammecœur drew up beside Laure. The man was white with nervousness, and he bent toward her and said in a low voice: “Sister of angels, grant me pardon for this act!”

Laure had gone all aflame. Her heart was beating tremulously and her dry throat contracted so that she could not speak. But looking, for one fleeting instant, into his face, she smiled.

Flammecœur could have laughed for joy, for he saw that his cause was won. And the ease of this conquest did not make him contemptuous of it; for however little he understood it, there was that in this childlike nun that made him hold his breath with reverence before her. The hour that followed their second meeting was almost as new to him as to her, in the stretch of emotions. They spoke very little. From behind them came the continual, droll chatter of Yvain and the answering giggles of Eloise. But Laure could not have laughed, and the trouvère knew it. As they entered the forest, however, at no great distance from the priory, he leaned far over and laid one of his gloved hands upon the tunic that covered her knee.

“Let me have some gage,—some token of thee,” he said in a hoarse and unsteady tone.

“I cannot! Oh, I cannot!”

He did not urge, but resignedly drew his hand away; and as Laure’s body made the little, involuntary movement of following him, he contained his joy with an effort.

Now the white priory was visible from afar, among the leafless trees; and so Laure, reining in her horse, turned to her companion: “Thou must leave us at once,” she whispered, trembling.

He bent his head, and drew his horse to a standstill. At the same time Yvain and Eloise rode up, having just pledged themselves to eternal devotion. After a moment’s hesitation, Flammecœur leaned again toward Laure, asking, this time fearfully,—

“Wilt thou tell me, lady, in what part of the convent is thy cell?”

She looked at him, wondering, but answered what he wanted, and then waited, in silence, praying that he would ask another question. He sat, however, with his head bent over so that she could not see his face, and he said nothing more. Laure sighed, looked up into the wintry sky, looked down to the snow-covered earth, felt the pall of her frozen life closing around her once again, and then got a sudden, blind determination that that life should not smother the little, creeping flame that had to-day been lighted in her heart. Looking sidewise at Flammecœur, who sat bowed upon his horse, she whispered,—

“Shall we—see—each other yet again?”

“By all the saints—and God—we shall! We shall!”

“Alas, Angelique, we are late for vespers! Haste!” cried Eloise, in the same moment.

Laure sent the spur into her palfrey, which leaped forward like the stone from a sling. Eloise followed after her at a terrifying pace, and the troubadour and his page stood and watched them till they were lost among the trees. The two reached the priory gate almost together; and before they were admitted, Eloise, her face flushed and her eyes shining, whispered imploringly to Laure: “Confess it not! Confess it not! Else shall we never go again!”

To this plea Laure had no time to make reply; but the other, seeing her manner, had, somehow, no fear that she would betray herself, and with her the delicious love-prattlings of Yvain.

They found vespers just at an end, and were reproved for their tardy return. Eloise retreated to her cell at once, to repeat her penitential Aves of the morning, and Laure retired ostensibly for the same purpose.

Once alone in her cell, the young girl took off her riding-garments,—the unusual cap and veil, boots, gloves, and spur,—and put them carefully away in her oaken chest. Afterwards she straightened her bliault and her hair, set her image of the Virgin straight upon its shelf, and moved the priedieu a little more accurately between the door and her bed. Then, standing up, she looked about her. There was nothing more to do. She was alone with her heart, and she could no longer escape from thinking. So she sat down on the bed, folded her hands upon her knees, and in this wise twisted out the meaning of her day, till she found in her secret soul that the unspeakable, the unholy, the most glorious, had come to her, to fill the great void of her empty life.

_CHAPTER FOUR_ THE PASSION

In the evening of the day of that momentous visit, after compline was over, and she was in her bed in her cell, Laure yielded herself up to sleep only after a rebellious struggle; she wished intensely to lie awake with her wonderful thoughts. Sleep prevailed, however, and was sound and dreamless; for she was physically tired out.

At two in the morning came the first boom of the church bell pulled by the sleep-laden sexton,—the beginning of the call to matins. The night was very black; and only after two or three minutes did Laure struggle up from her bed, trembling with that dead, numb feeling that results from being roused too suddenly from heavy unconsciousness. Mechanically the young girl felt about for her lantern and opened the door into the dimly lit corridor. There were half a dozen nuns and novices grouped about the stone lamp which burned all night on the wall, and from which the sisters were accustomed to light their cressets for matins. Laure waited her turn in a dazed manner, and when she had obtained the light, went back to her cell, left the door unclosed according to rule, and, placing the lantern on the small table, knelt at her priedieu.

So far her every move had been mechanical. Her brain was not yet awake. But, with the first words of the Agnus Dei, the full memory of yesterday suddenly flashed upon her. She had been at home, and had found there Flammecœur!—Flammecœur! Her own heart flamed up, and the prayer died away from it. Her lips moved on, and the murmur of her voice continued to swell the low chorus that spread through the whole priory. But Laure was not speaking those words. Her whole mind and heart had turned irrevocably to another subject,—to another god, the little, rosy-winged boy that finds his way into the sternest places, and lights them with his magic presence till they are changed for their inhabitants beyond recognition. Strictly speaking, Laure was not thinking of the trouvère. Her thoughts refused to review him in the light of her knowledge of him. She would not think of his personality,—his face, eyes, form, or manner. Her heart shrank from anything so bold. She refused to question herself. Yet her mind was full of him, and the other subject in her thoughts was this: that in eleven days more, were God pitying to her, she should, perhaps—ever perhaps—see him again.

When matins and lauds were over, the sisters returned to bed till the hour for dressing, a quarter to five. Laure was accustomed to sleep soundly through this period. But to-day she refused to close her eyes. Nay, it was ecstasy to her to lie dreaming of many old, vague things that had scarce any connection with her new heart, and yet would have had no place at all with her had they not carried as an undercurrent the image of that same new god.

All day Laure went about with a song in her soul. Why she should have been glad, who can say? What possible hope for happiness there was for her, what idea of any finale save one of grief, resignation, or despair, she never thought to ask herself. She let her new happiness take possession of her without stopping to analyze it. And it was as well that she did no analyzing. For a logical process would inevitably have brought her to the beginning of these things, to the moment, the ineffable moment, when the hand of Flammecœur had first rested on her own.

This first morning passed away. Dinner was eaten, and recreation time came. Now Eloise persistently sought Laure’s company; and Laure, with equal persistence and quite remarkable adroitness, avoided her. The young nun knew, from the face of Eloise, that there were a thousand silly thoughts ready to come out of her; and Laure could not bear to have her own delicate, rainbow dreams so crudely disturbed. And there was something more about the presence of Eloise that disturbed the daughter of Le Crépuscule; this was the understanding between them that they should not confess the real reason for their tardy arrival on the previous day. Laure had made up her mind, tacitly, to confess nothing—yet. But she did not like to be reminded of the fact.

That night Laure successfully resisted the dictates of sleep, with the result that, all next day, she felt dull and weak. When dinner and sext were over, and recreation came, she obtained ready permission to retire to her cell instead of going to the garden or the court or the library with the other nuns. Once alone and safe from the attacks of Eloise, who was becoming importunate, she lay down on her bed and sank, almost at once, to rest. While she slept, the sun came out upon the outer world, and poured its beams over the chill valley beyond the priory. The gray, lowering clouds were broken up. The heavens shone blue, and the ice-crust shimmered with myriad, sparkling diamonds. No sunlight could enter the cell of sleep; for it was afternoon, and the single little window looked toward the east. But after nearly an hour of shining stillness, there came a sound from the frozen vale that was more beautiful than sunlight. It reached Laure’s ears, and woke her. She rose up, hearkening incredulously for a moment, and then, with a smothered cry of delight, threw herself forward again on the bed, and laughed and moaned together into the cold sheets.

From below, just outside her window, rose a voice, a tenor voice, high and clear and mellow, singing a chanson of the south to the accompaniment of a six-stringed lute. After a few seconds Laure ventured to raise her head and listen. With a thrill of ecstasy she caught the words,—

“_Ele ot plain le visage, si fu encolorez; Les iex vairs et riants, lonc et traités le nez; La bouche vermeillête, le menton forcelé; Le col plain et blanc plus que n’est flor de pré._”

At this point in the familiar song, sung with a fervor she had never dreamed of, Laure rose involuntarily from the bed, and, redder than any flower, stole to the window. Timidly, her heart beating so that she was like to choke, she looked out into the snowy clearing. Just beneath her, in the shadow of the wall, so close that a whisper from him might easily have been heard, stood Flammecœur.

He was scanning closely the row of cell windows above him, hoping against hope for a sight of Laure’s face. Ignorant as he was of convent hours, he knew that he had but the barest chance of making her hear; and that there was less than this chance of seeing her. Thus when Laure’s face, framed in its soft white veil, looked out to him, Flammecœur experienced a rush of emotion that was overpowering. She inspired him with a reverence that he had not known he could feel for any woman. Her face was so glorified in his eyes that she looked like an image of the Holy Virgin. Breaking off in the middle of the song, he fell upon his knees there in the snow, uttering incoherent and indistinguishable phrases of adoration.

Flammecœur was theatrical enough; also he was hard, utterly unscrupulous, and a scoffer at holy things. His only idol was his love for beauty. This was his religion, and he had worshipped it consistently from boyhood. Now he had found its almost perfect embodiment in this girl, in whom innocence, purity, youth, and beauty were inextricably mingled. And Flammecœur strove to adjust his rather callous spirit to hers, feeling that he would sooner breathe his last than shock her delicacy—till he had attained his end.

Now, in the dying sunlight, the two talked together; and in the light of his new reverence the young nun lost a little of her timidity and made open confession in her looks, though never in her words, of her delight in his presence.

“Tell me, O Maiden of Angels,” he said, addressing her in a term that at once brought them both a sense of familiarity and of pleasure, “tell me, is this thy regular hour of solitude? Could I—might I hope—to see thee often here—hold speech with thee—without endangering thy devotions?”

“Nay, verily!” whispered Laure, hastily. “Oh, thou must not come! Nay, I am supposed to be with the other sisters at this hour of recreation. Only to-day was I permitted—”

“And didst thou think of me? Hopest thou I would come? Didst think—”

“Monsieur!” Laure’s tone was reproachful and embarrassed.

“Forgive me! Though verily I know not how I have offended thee!”

Laure was about to utter her reproach when suddenly, around the corner of the wall, appeared the head of Flammecœur’s horse. All at once, at this apparition, the old spirit of freedom and the old love of liberty rushed over her. “Ah, would that I might leap down there into the snow, and mount with thee thy steed, and ride, and ride, and ride back to my home in Le Crépuscule!” she cried out, utterly forgetful of herself and of her position.

Instantly Flammecœur seized her mood. “By all the saints, come on!” he cried. “I will catch thee in mine arms; and we will ride! We will ride and ride—not back—”

“Alas! Now Heaven forgive me! What have I said? Farewell, monsieur! Indeed, farewell!”

And ere Flammecœur could grasp her sudden revulsion of feeling, she was gone; the window above him was empty. He stayed where he was for some moments, meditating on what plea would be successful. Finally, deciding silence the surer part, he remounted his horse and turned slowly to the west, through the chill evening, doing battle with himself. He found that he was unable to cope with the flame that this pretty nun had kindled in his brain. His anger rose against her, to be once more overtopped by passion. And had he not been so occupied in trying to regain sufficient self-control to make some safe plan of action, he might have known himself for the knave he surely was.

In the priory three days went prayerfully by; and at the end of that time Laure found herself sick with misery. Flammecœur had laid hold of her heart, and her struggles against the thought of him began to grow stronger; for she longed to escape from her present state of madness. Incredible as it may seem, she never had, in connection with him, one single tainted thought. Laure was a peculiarly innocent girl,—innocent even of any unshaped desire or longing. The force of her nature had always found relief in physical activity. In her home life all things had been clean and free before her. And in the convent the teaching that emotion was sin had been accepted by her without thought. Nevertheless, in her, all unwaked, there lay a broad, passionate nature that needed but a quickening touch to throw her into such depths as, were she taken unawares, would eventually drag her to her doom. Her ignorance was pitiable; and even now she had entered alone upon a dark stretch of road, the end of which she did not herself know, and which none could prophesy to her.

Three days of unhappiness, of battle with herself, and of longing for a sight of Flammecœur, and then—he came. Again it was the recreation hour, and Laure was in the garden, walking in the cold with one or two of the sisters. Her thoughts had strayed from the general chatter, and her eyes, like her mind, looked afar off. Her companions, rather accustomed to Angelique’s vagaries, paid little attention to her, and she pursued her reverie uninterrupted. Suddenly, from out of the snowy stillness, a sound reached her ears. For an instant her heart ceased to beat; and she halted in her walk. Yes, Flammecœur was singing, somewhere near. It was the same chanson, and it came from the other side of the priory. He must be where he had been before. She looked at the faces of the nuns beside her. Did they not also hear? How dull, how intensely dull they were! She went on for a few steps undecidedly. Then she halted.

“I had forgot,” she said quietly. “I must to my cell. I have five Aves to repeat for inattention at the reading of St. Elizabeth this morning.”

“Methought they were to be said in chapter,” observed one of her companions, indifferently.

“Nay; Reverend Mother gave permission,—in my cell,” answered Laure, rather weakly; for she saw that she should get into difficulty if any one mentioned this matter again. However, Flammecœur’s voice was singing still and, flinging care to the winds, she made a hasty escape.

Fifteen minutes later she was in the church, kneeling at the shrine of St. Joseph. She said twenty Aves there before she rose, yet got no comfort from them. For twenty Aves is small salve to the conscience for the first guilty deceit of one’s life.

That evening was not wholly a pleasant one; yet Laure underwent fierce gusts of happiness. She had seen him again; she had held speech with him, and had smiled when he looked at her. She felt his looks like caresses, and was half ashamed and half enamoured of them. Her night was filled with a tumult of dreams; and when day dawned again she was hot with the fever of unrest.

Days went by, and then weeks, and finally two months, and March was on the world. Hints of spring were borne down the breeze. The deeply frozen earth began slowly, slowly to throw off its weight of ice, and to open its breast to the warm touches of the sun. The black, bare branches of the forest trees waved about uncannily, like gaunt arms, beckoning to the distant summer. And in all this time the situation of the little nun of Crépuscule had not changed. The troubadour still lingered at the Chateau, a welcome guest. And still he haunted the priory, unknown to any one save her whom he continually sought. As yet he had done nothing, said not one word that betrayed his intentions. He had waited patiently till the time should be ripe; and now that time approached. Laure had endured a life of secret torture, but had not succeeded in throwing off the shackles she had voluntarily put on. Nay, she confessed now to herself that, without his occasional coming, she could not have lived. She chafed at their restricted intercourse. She longed to meet him where she could put her hands into his, where she could listen to the sound of his voice without the terror of discovery. All this Flammecœur had read in her, but still he waited till of her own accord she should break her bonds.

There came a day in March when the two, Laure and Flammecœur, with Eloise and her now very _bel ami_, Yvain, were riding from Crépuscule to the priory. As they went, the spring sun sent its beams aslant across the road; and birds, newly arrived from the far south, were site-hunting among the black trees. The air was filled with the chilly sweetness that made one dizzy with dreams of coming summer; and both Laure and the trouvère grew slowly intoxicated as they rode side by side, so close that his knee touched her palfrey’s flank. Behind them, Yvain and Eloise were still discussing their love-notions. The afternoon was misty with approaching sunset. In the radiant golden light, Laure’s heart grew big with unshed tears of life; and before the sobs came, Flammecœur, leaning far toward her, whispered thickly,—

“Thou must come to me alone! I must have thee alone. I must know thy lips. ’Fore God, refuse me not, thou greatly beloved!”