Chapter V: Part 5

In the course of a few days, Lenore began to grow morbidly sensitive over her husband’s attitude; and, out of sheer misery, she began to avoid him persistently. This brought a still more bitter blow to her, for she discovered that he was glad to be avoided. Lenore was desperate; but still she was brave, still she held to herself; and if at times she sought refuge with madame and Alixe, those two kindly and pitying souls met her with outstretched arms of silent sympathy, and never betrayed to her by so much as a glance how much they had observed of Gerault’s incomprehensible neglect.

The holiday week passed, and with its end came a spirit of relief that it was over. Next morning the usual occupations were begun, and Lenore went up to the spinning-room with the rest of the women. This work-room was on the second floor, and ran almost the whole length of the south side of the Castle: a long, narrow room, with many windows looking out upon the courtyard, and only a sideways view of the hazy, turquoise sea. Here was every known mechanical contrivance for the making of cloth and tapestry, and their development out of the raw wool. The loom, just now half filled with a warp of pale green, stood at the east end of the room; the fixed combs, the half-dozen spinning-wheels, the tambour-frames for embroidery, and the great tapestry-border frame, were ranged in an orderly line down the remaining length, and each of the maidens had her particular task of the summer in some stage of completion. Since Lenore’s arrival a spinning-wheel had been set up here for her, and she sat down to it at once, while her demoiselles were directed by madame to begin work on the tapestry border, at which four could apply the needle at the same time. As the roomful settled quickly to work, under the general guidance of madame, Lenore began to tread her wheel and draw out thread with a hand practised enough to win the approval even of Eleanore. And as the morning wore along, Lenore found herself unaccountably soothed and comforted by her task and the kindly atmosphere of perseverance and attention to duty surrounding her.

Nevertheless, it was not a comfortable day for such work. The heat was intense. Fingers grew constantly damp with sweat. Thread knotted and broke, silk drew, and little exclamations of anger and disgust were frequently to be heard. However, the labor was continued as usual for three hours, till eleven o’clock, the dinner hour, came, and the little company willingly left the spinning-room to another afternoon of silence, and went downstairs to meat. At the foot of the stairs stood Gerault, waiting for Lenore; and when she reached him he kissed her upon the brow before leading her to table. In that moment the girl’s heart sang, and she felt that her day had been fittingly crowned.

In the early afternoon Lenore found that there were new occupations for all the Castle. The demoiselles were despatched to the long room on the first floor, which, though not dignified by the name of library, yet took that place, for instruction in certain things, mental and moral, by the friar-steward, Father Anselm. The young men were at sword practice in the keep. And Lenore, who could write her name and read a little from parchment manuscripts in both Latin and French, and whose education was therefore finished, was summoned by madame and taken over the whole Castle, receiving, at various stages, instruction in domestic duties and the management of the great building. She saw everything, from the linen-presses upstairs to the wine-cellars underground; and everywhere the hand of madame was visible in the scrupulous exactness and neatness with which the Castle was kept. Then in her heart Lenore determined that in time she would learn madame’s habits, and, if it could be done in no other way, win Gerault’s respect by her abilities as a housekeeper.

The hours of late afternoon and early evening were devoted to recreation, which was entered into with new zest by every one. To be sure, Gerault sat all evening with his mother, playing draughts. But his eyes occasionally strayed to the figure of his wife; and later, when the Castle was still, and Lenore, in the great curtained bed, was wandering on the borderland of sleep, she felt that this day was the happiest she had yet spent in Le Crépuscule; and she knew in her heart that work and work only could now bring her peace. And thereafter, poor little dreamer, a smile hovered upon her face as she slept!

On the tenth day of the new regime in Le Crépuscule, squire Courtoise sat in the armory, polishing the design engraved on his lord’s breastplate. Courtoise was moody. Ordinarily his cheerfulness in the face of insuperable dulness was something to be proud of. But latterly his faith, the one great faith in his heart,—not religion, but utter devotion to his lord—had been receiving a series of shocks that had shaken it to its foundation. Courtoise was by nature as gentle, genial, and kindly a fellow as ever held a lance; and in his heart he had for years blindly worshipped Gerault. His creed of devotion, indeed, had embraced the whole family of Le Crépuscule, because Gerault was its head. Till the time of their last going to Rennes, there had been for him no woman like madame, no such maid as Laure, and no man anywhere comparable to his master. Poor Laure had dealt him a grievous blow when she followed Flammecœur from the priory. But from the day of Gerault’s betrothal to little Lenore, the daughter of the Iron Chateau had held his heart in her hand, and might have done with it as she would. Loving the two of them as he did, and seeing each day fresh proof of Lenore’s affection for her lord and his, Courtoise naturally looked for a fitting return of this from the Seigneur. And here, all in a night, Courtoise’s first great doubt had entered in. They had been married three days, they were barely at Le Crépuscule, before Courtoise saw what made him sick with uneasiness. If the Seigneur had wedded this exquisite maiden with the sunlit hair, must he not love her? And yet—and yet—and yet—Courtoise sat in the armory and polished freely at the steel, and swore to himself under his breath, recklessly incurring whatever penance Anselm should see fit to give. For here it was mid-afternoon, and his little lady just freed from her hours of toil; and there was Gerault gone off by himself, without even his squire, forsooth, to hawk with the Iron-Beak over the moor!

Courtoise had been indulging himself in ire for some time, when a shadow stole past the doorway of the armory. He looked up. The shadow had gone; but presently it returned and halted: “Courtoise!”

The young fellow leaped to his feet, and the breastplate clattered to the floor. Lenore, looking very transparently pale, very humbly wistful, and having just a suspicion of red around her eyes, was regarding him tentatively from the doorway.

“Ma dame, what service dost thou ask?”

“None, Courtoise,” the voice sounded rather faint and tired. “None, save to tell me if thou hast lately seen my lord.”

The expression on her face was so pathetic that Courtoise was suddenly struck to the heart, and he bit his tongue before he could reply quietly enough: “Ma Dame Lenore, Seigneur Gerault rode out long time since a-hawking; and methinks he will shortly now return. The hour for evening meat approaches. I—I—” he broke off, stammering; and Lenore without speaking bowed her head, and patiently turned away.

Courtoise sat down again when she left him, and remained motionless, the steel on his knees, his hands idle, staring into space. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and hurled the breastplate to the floor with a smothered oath. “Gray of St. Gray!” he cried, “what devil hath seized the man I loved? Gerault, my lord, rides out and leaves this angel to weep after him! Gray of St. Gray! what desires he more fair than this his Lenore? What—what—what—” the muttered words died into thoughts as Courtoise clapped a cap on his head and strode away from the armory and out of the Castle.

In the courtyard the first object that met his eyes was Gerault’s horse, standing in front of the keep, with a stable-boy holding him by the bridle. Gerault himself was in the doorway of the empty falcon-house, holding a _hagard_ on his wrist, while two dead pigeons swung from his girdle.

“Courtoise! Behold our spoils! Hath not Talon-Fer done Alixe’s training honor?” cried Gerault, the note of pleasure keener than usual in his voice.

Courtoise, flushed with rising anger, went over to him. “My lord, the Lady Lenore asks for thee!” he said a little hoarsely, paying no attention to the dead pigeons or the young falcon.

Gerault very slightly raised his brows, more at Courtoise’s tone, perhaps, than at the words he spoke. “The Lady Lenore,” he said.

“Even so—the Lady Lenore—thy wife!”

“I understand thee, good Courtoise.”

The veins in the younger man’s neck and temples stood out under the strain of repression. “Comes my lord?” he asked slowly.

“In good time, Courtoise. The _hagard_ must be fed.” Gerault would have turned away, but Courtoise, with a burst of irritation, exclaimed,—

“I will feed the creature!”

Now Gerault turned to him again: “Hast thou some strange malady or frenzy, that thou shouldst use such tones to me, boy?”

“Tones—tones, and yet again tones! Gerault—thou churl! Ay, I that have been faithful squire to thee these many years, I say it. Thou churl and worse, to have wedded with the sweetest lady ever sun shone upon, to bring her, a stranger, home to thy Castle, and then leave her there, day following day, while thou ridest over the moors to dally with some bird! All the Castle stares at the cruelty of thy neglect. Daily the demoiselles whisper together, wondering what distemper thy lady hath that thou seest her not by day—”

“Hush, boy—hush! Thou’rt surely mad!” cried out Gerault, with a note in his voice that gave Courtoise pause.

Then there fell between them a silence, heavy, and so binding that Courtoise could not move. He stood staring into his master’s face, watching the color grow from white to red and back again, and the expression change from angry amazement to something softer, something strange, something that Courtoise did not know in his lord’s face. And Gerault gnawed his lip, and bent low his head, and presently spoke, in a voice that was not his own, but was rather curiously muffled and unnatural.

“Thou sayest well, Courtoise. ’Tis true I have neglected her, poor, frail, pretty child! Ah! I had never thought how I have neglected her”; and Gerault sat suddenly down upon the step of the falcon-house and laid his head in his hands, in an attitude of such dejection that Courtoise experienced a swift rush of repentance.

For some time there was again silence between them. Courtoise, thoroughly mystified by the whole situation, had nothing whatever to say. Finally the Seigneur stood up, this time with his head high, and his self-control returned. He put the falcon, screaming, into his squire’s hands, and took the bodies of the pigeons from his belt.

“So, Courtoise, I leave them all with you. Where is the Lady Lenore?”

“Sooth, I know not; yet methinks when she left the armory where she had spoken to me, she passed into the chapel.”

“I go to her. And I thank thee, Courtoise, for thy rebuke.”

“My lord, my lord, forgive me!” Courtoise choked with a sudden new rush of devotion for his master. He would have fallen on his knees there on the courtyard stones, but that the Seigneur, with a faint smile at him, was gone, carrying alone the burden of his inexplicable sorrow.

The Lady Lenore was in the chapel, half kneeling, half lying upon the altar-step. In the dim light of the shadowy place her golden hair and amber-colored garments glimmered faintly. She was not praying, yet neither was she weeping, now. The long, hot loneliness of the afternoon had thrown her into a state of apathy, in which she wished for nothing, and in which she refused to think. She had no desire for company; but had any one come—David, or Alixe, or Madame—she should not have cared. It was only Gerault that she would not have see her in this place and attitude. The thought of Gerault was continually with her, as something omnipresent; but at this especial hour she felt no wish to see the man himself. Yet now he came. She heard a tread on the stones that sent a tremor through her whole body. Then some one was kneeling beside her, and a quiet voice said gently in her ear,—

“Lenore!—My child!—Why art thou lying here?”

Lenore tried hard to speak; but her throat contracted convulsively, and she made no answer.

“Child, art thou sick for thy home? Thou hast found sorrow here, and loneliness, in this new abode. Perhaps thou wouldst have had me oftener at thy side. Is it so, Lenore?”

The girl’s golden head burrowed down into her arms, and she seemed to shake it, but she did not speak.

Gerault looked about him a little helplessly. Then, taking new resolution, he put one arm about her, and, drawing her slight form close to him, he said in a halting and broken way: “Come, my wife—come with me for a little time. Let us walk out together to the cliff by the sea. The sun draws near the water—the afternoon grows rich with gold.—And thou and I will talk together.—Lenore, much might I tell thee of myself, whereby thou couldst understand many things that trouble thee now. Knowing them, and with them, me, thou shalt more justly judge me. Come, little one,—rise up!” He drew her to her feet beside him, and then, with his arms still around her, he stood and put his lips to her half-averted cheek. Under that kiss she grew cold and tremulous, but still preserved her silence. Then the two moved, side by side, out of the Castle, through the courtyard, and on to the outer terrace that ran along the very edge of the precipitous cliff against which, far below, the summer sea gently broke and plashed.

Here, hand in hand, the Seigneur and his lady walked, looking off together at the glory of the mighty waters. The crimson sky was veiled in light clouds that caught a more and more splendid reflection of the fiery ball behind them; while the moving waves below were stained with pink and mellow gold. Lenore kept her eyes fixed fast upon this sight, while she listened to what Gerault was saying to her. He talked, in a fitful, chaotic way, of many things: of his boyhood here, of Laure his sister, and Alixe, and of “one other that was not as any of us,—our cousin, a daughter of Laval, whose dead mother had put her in the keeping of mine.”

So much mention of this girl Gerault made, and then went on to other things, jumbling together many incidents and scenes of his boyhood and his youth, never guessing that Lenore, who continued so quietly to look off upon the sea, had seized upon this one little thing that he had said, and realized, with a woman’s intuition, that the story of his heart lay here. As Gerault rambled on, he came gradually to feel that he had lost her attention, and so, little by little, as the sunset light died away, he ceased to speak, and there crept in upon them, over them, through them, that terrible silence that both of them knew: the all-pervading, ghostly silence that haunted this spot; the silence that had brought the name upon the Castle,—the Chateau du Crépuscule. Lenore grew slowly cold with miserable foreboding, while Gerault, rebelling against himself, was struggling to break the bonds of his own nature.

“Well named is this home of ours, Lenore,” he said sadly.

“Yea, it is well named,” was the reply.

“Wilt thou—be—lonely forever here? Art thou lonely now? Hast thou a sickness for thy home and for thy people?”

For an instant Lenore hesitated. At Gerault’s words her heart had leaped up with a great cry of “Yes”; and yet now there was something in her that withheld her from saying it. When at last she answered him, her words were unaccountable to herself, yet she spoke them feelingly: “Nay, Gerault. Thou hast taken me to be one with thee. Thou hast brought me here to thy home, and it is also mine.”

A light of pleasure came into Gerault’s face, and he took her into his arms with a freer and more open warmth than he had ever shown her before. “Indeed, thou art my wife—one with me—my sweet one—my sweet child Lenore! And this my home is also thine,—Chateau du Crépuscule!”

Suddenly Lenore shivered in his clasp. That word “Crépuscule” sounded like a knell in her ears, and as she looked upon the gray walls looming out of the twilight mists, the very blood in her veins stood still. Whether Gerault felt her dread she did not know, but he did not loose his hold upon her for a long time. They stood, close-clasped, on the edge of the cliff, looking off upon the darkening sea, till, over the eastern horizon line, the great pink moon slipped up, giving promise of glory to the night. The cool evening breeze came off the waters. They heard the creaking and grating of the drawbridge, as it was raised. Then a flock of sea gulls floated up from the water below, and veered southward, along the shore, toward their home. Finally, in the deepening west, the evening star came out, hanging there like a diamond on an invisible thread. Then Gerault whispered in the ear of Lenore,—

“Sweet child, it is late. The hour of evening meat is now long past. Let us go into the Castle.”

Lenore yielded at once to the pressure of Gerault’s arm, and let herself be drawn away. But she carried forever after the memory of that quiet half-hour, in which the mighty hand of nature had been lifted over her to give her blessing.

Courtoise the faithful had kept the two from a summons at the hour of supper; and on their return they found food left upon the table for them; but, what was unusual at this time, the great room was empty. Only Courtoise, who was again at work in the armory, knew how long they sat and ate and talked together, and only he saw them when they rose from table, passed immediately to the stairs, and ascended, side by side. Then the young squire knew that they would come down no more that night; and he guessed what was really true: that on that evening Lenore’s cup of happiness seemed full; for, as never before, Gerault claimed and took to himself the unselfish devotion that she was so ready to give. When she slept, a smile yet lingered round her lips; nor, in that sleep, did she feel the change that came upon her lord.

Not many hours after she had sunk to rest, Lenore woke slowly, to find herself alone in the canopied bed. Gerault was not there. She put out her hand to him, and found his place empty. Opening her eyes with a little effort, she pushed the curtains back from the edge of the bed, and looked about her. It could not be more than twelve o’clock. The room was flooded with moonlight, till it looked like a fairy place. The three windows were wide open to the breath of the sea; and beside one of them knelt Gerault. He was wrapped in a full mantle that hid the lines of his figure; and Lenore could see only that his brow rested on the window-sill, that his shoulders were bent, and his hands clasped tight on the ledge beyond his head. Unutterable pain was expressed in the attitude.

What was he doing there? Of what were his thoughts? Why had he left her side? Above all, what was his secret trouble? These questions passed quickly through Lenore’s brain, and her first impulse was to rise and go to him. Had she not the right to know his heart? Had he not given it to her this very night? She looked at him again, asking herself if he were really in pain; if he were not rather simply looking out upon the moonlit sea, and was now, perhaps, engaged in prayer, to which the beauty of the scene had lifted him. She would go to him and learn.

She sat up in bed, pushed her golden hair out of her neck and back from her face. Then she drew the curtains still farther aside, preparatory to stepping out, when suddenly she saw Gerault lift his head as if he listened for something far away; and then she caught the whispered word, “Lenore!”

For some reason, she could not have told why, Lenore did not move, but sat quite still, staring at him. She heard him say again, more loudly, “Lenore!” but he did not turn toward her bed. Rather, he was looking out, out of the window, and down the line of rocky shore that stretched away to the north.

“Lenore! I hear thee! I hear thy voice!” he whispered, to himself, fearfully. “I hear thee speaking to me.—Oh, my God! My God! When wilt Thou remove this torture from my brain?” He rose to his feet and lifted his arms as if in supplication. “It is a curse upon me! It is a madness, that I cannot love this other maiden. Thou spirit of my lost Lenore!—Lenore!—Lenore!—Thou callest to me from the sea by day and night!—Only and forever beloved, come thou back to me, out of the sea!—Come back to me!—Come back!” His hands were clenched under such a stress of emotion as his girl-wife had never dreamed him capable of. Now he stood there without speaking, his breath coming in sobbing gasps that shook his whole frame. The beating of his heart seemed as if it would suffocate him, and his body swayed back and forward, under the force of his mental anguish. For the first time in all his years of silent grief, he gave way unreservedly to himself; let all the pent-up agony come forth as it would from him, as he stood there, looking off upon that wonderful, inscrutable, shimmering ocean, that had played such havoc with his changeless heart.

From the bed where she sat, Lenore watched him, silent, motionless, afraid almost to breathe lest he should discover that she was awake. But Gerault wist nothing of her presence. He had known no joy in her, in the hallowed hours of the early night; else he could not now stand there at the window, calling, in tones of unutterable agony and tenderness, upon his dead,—

“Lenore! Lenore! Come back!—O sea—thou mighty, cruel sea, deliver her up for one moment to my arms! Let me have but one look, a touch, a kiss.—Oh, my God!—Come back to me at last, or else I die!”

He fell to his knees again, faint with the power of his emotion; and Lenore, the other, the unloved Lenore, sat behind him, in the great bed, watching.

The moonlight crept slowly from that room, and passed, like a wraith, off the sea, and beyond, into the east. The stars shone brighter for the passing of the moon. There was no sound in the great stillness, save the rustling murmur of the outflowing tide. In the chilly darkness before the break of dawn, Gerault of the Twilight Castle crept back to the bed he had left, looking fixedly, through the gloom, at the white, passive face of his wife, who lay back, with closed eyes, on her pillow. And when at last he slept again, she did not move; yet she was not asleep. In that hour her youth was passing from her, and she, a woman at last, entered alone into that dim and quiet vale where those that lived about her had wandered so long, so patiently, and, at last, so wearily, alone.

_CHAPTER EIGHT_
TO A TRUMPET-CALL

After the night of Gerault’s passion, twelve days ebbed and flowed away without any incident of moment in the Castle. How much bitter heart-life was enacted in that time, it had indeed been difficult to tell. Lenore wondered, constantly, as she looked into the faces about her and questioned them as she refused to question her own heart. If, beneath that cloak of lordly courtesy and calmness, Gerault could hide such a grief as she knew was buried in his soul; if she herself found it so easy to conceal her own knowledge of that bitterest of all facts, that she was a wife unloved,—what stories of mental anguish, of long-hidden torture, might not lie behind the impassive masks around her. There was Madame Eleanore, madame of the commanding presence and infinitely gentle manners. What was it that had generated the expression of her eyes? Lenore had scarcely heard the name of Laure, thought only that there had been a daughter in Crépuscule who had died long since; and so she wove a little history of her own to account for that haunted look so often to be found in madame’s dark orbs. Gerault she knew. Alixe puzzled her, but there also she found food for her morbidness. Courtoise and the demoiselles she did not consider; but David the dwarf held possibilities. The young woman’s new-sharpened glance quickly discovered that the jester suffered also from the devouring malady, and she wondered over and pitied him also.

Indeed, at this time, Lenore was in an abnormal and unhealthy frame of mind. It seemed to her that all the world lived only to hide its sorrows. But her melancholy speculations concerning the nature of the griefs of others saved her from the disastrous effects of too much self-analysis. Her love for Gerault, to which she always clung, led her to pity him as he would not have believed she could have pitied any one; and, unnatural as it seemed, she brooded as much over his sorrow as over her own. Melancholy she was, indeed, and older by many years than when she had first come to Le Crépuscule. Sometimes the fact that Gerault did not know how much she knew brought her a measure of comfort, but it made her uneasy, also, for she was not sure that she was not wrongfully deceiving him. She could not bring herself to confess to Father Anselm what she felt no one should know; and neither did she find it in her heart to tell Gerault himself of her inadvertent discovery, though had she but done this last, all might have come right in the end. But from day to day she put away from her the thought of speaking, and from day to day she drew closer into herself, till she was shut to all thought of confiding in him who had the right to know the reason of her unhappiness.

Gerault, however, was not unobserving, and he noticed the change in her very early in its existence. It was an intangible thing, elusive, changeable, varying in degree. All this he realized; but, man-like, never guessed the reason for it, never knew that Lenore herself was unconscious of it. Did she desire to coquet with him, render him uneasily jealous of every one on whom she turned her eyes? If so, it was useless, for the knight believed himself incapable of jealousy in regard to her. He had married her for the sake of his mother, and for Le Crépuscule,—much as the fact did him dishonor. In the very hour of their highest love, his thoughts had been all for another; and when she slept he had left her side to cry into the night and the silence, unto that other, of whom this young Lenore had never heard. Despite these confessed things, the Seigneur Gerault felt in some way hurt when the timid shadow of his wife no longer haunted him by day, nor stretched to his protecting arm by night. She had withdrawn from him into herself, and even his occasional half-hours of devotion failed to bring any light into her eyes, though she treated him always with half-tender courtesy. Her lord was not a little puzzled by her new manner, but he took it in his own way; and there was presently a stiffness of demeanor between the two that would have been almost laughable had it not been so pathetically cruel to Lenore.

The month of July passed away, and August came into the land. Brittany, long blazing with sunlight, lay parching for want of rain. The moors grew brown and dusty, and the meadow flowers bloomed no more. But the blue sea shimmered radiantly day by day, and the sunsets were ever more glorious and more red.

On a day in the first week of the last summer month, when Anselm had found the temperature too great for the casting of choice paragraphs of Cicero before the unheeding demoiselles, when the Castle reeked with the smell of cooking, and the air outside was heavy with the odor of hard-baked earth, Gerault sat in the long room alone, reading Seneca from an illuminated text. A heretical document this, and not to be found in a monastery or holy place; yet there were in it such scraps of homely wisdom and comfort as the Seigneur—something of a scholar in his idle hours—had failed to find in Holy Scripture.

In its dimly lighted silence the long room was, at this hour, a soothing place. The row of small casement windows were open to the sea, and two or three swallows, coming up from the water below, flitted through the room, and once even a sleek and well-fed gull came to sit upon a sill and flap his wings over the flavor of his last fish.

Gerault’s back was turned to the light; yet he knew these little incidents of the birds, and took pleasure in them. A portion of his mind rejoiced lazily in the quiet and solitude; the rest was fixed upon the Latin words that he translated still with some lordly difficulty. He found himself in the mood to consider the thoughts of men long dead, and was indulging in the unsurpassed delight of the philosopher when, to his vast annoyance, Courtoise pushed aside the curtains of the door, and came into the room followed by another man. Gerault looked up testily; but as he uttered his first word of reproach, his eye caught the dress of his squire’s companion, and he broke off with an exclamation: “Dame! Thou, Favriole?”

“May it please thee, Seigneur du Crépuscule,” was the reply, as the new-comer advanced, bowing. He was elaborately and significantly dressed in a parti-colored surcoat of blue and white silk, emblazoned behind and before with the coronet and arms of Duke Jean of Brittany. His hosen were also parti-colored, yellow and blue, and the round cap that he held in his hand was of blue felt with a white feather. At his side hung the instrument of his calling, a silver trumpet on a tasselled cord; for he was a ducal herald, and, before he spoke, Gerault knew his errand.

“Welcome, welcome, Favriole!” he said kindly. “What is thy message now? Surely not war?”

“Nay, Seigneur Gerault! A merrier message than that!” Lifting his trumpet to his lips, he blew upon it a clear, silvery blast, and, after the rather absurd formality, began: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Be it known to all princes, barons, knights, and gentlemen of the Duchy of Brittany and the dependency of Normandy, and to the knights of Christian countries, if they be not enemies to the Duke our Sire,—to whom God give long life,—that in the ducal lists of Rennes in Brittany, upon the fifteenth day of this month of August in this year of grace 1381, and thereafter till the twentieth day of that month, there will be a great pardon of arms and very noble tourney fought after the ancient customs, at which tourney the chiefs will be the most illustrious Duke of Brittany, appellant, and the very valiant Hugo de Laci, Lord in vassalage to his Grace of England, of the Castle Andelin in Normandy, defendant. And hereby are invited all knights of Christian countries not at variance with our Lord Duke, to take part in the said tourney for the glory of Knighthood and the fame of their Ladies.”

Favriole finished, smiling and important, and from behind him rose a little buzz of interest. For, at sound of the trumpet, almost all the Castle company had hurried from their various retreats to learn the meaning of the untoward sound. In this group, not foremost, standing rather a little back from the rest, was Lenore, gravely regarding Gerault, where he sat with the parchment before him. She had recognized Favriole, the herald, for a familiar figure in the lists at that long-past tournament where she had first thought of being lady of her lord; and she grew a little white under the memories that the herald brought her. Gerault had seen her at the first moment of her coming, and, as soon as Favriole finished his announcement, beckoned her to his side. She came forward to him quietly, and took her place, acknowledging the pleased salute of the visitor with the slightest inclination of her golden head. When she was seated at the table, Gerault, who had risen at her coming, spoke:

“Our thanks to you, Sir Herald, for your message, which you have come a long and weary way to bear to the one spurred knight in this house. And devotion to our Lord, Duke Jean, who—” Gerault paused. His mother had just come to the room and halted on the threshold, a little in front of the general group, her eyes travelling swiftly from Favriole’s face to that of Lenore. Gerault, his thought broken, hesitated for an instant, and turned also to look at his wife. Instantly Lenore rose, and advanced a step or two to his side. Then she said in a curiously pleading tone,—

“I do humbly entreat my lord that he will not refuse to enter this tournament; but that he will at once set out for Rennes, there to fight for—for ‘the glory of his Knighthood, and the—the fame of his—Ladies’!”

When Lenore had spoken she found the whole room staring at her in open amazement. Gerault gave his wife a glance that brought her a moment’s bitter satisfaction,—a look filled with astonishment and discomfort. Long he gazed at her, but could find no softening curve in her white, set face. Every line in her figure bade him go. At length, then, he turned back to Favriole, with something that resembled a sigh, and continued his speech.

“Sir Herald, carry my name for the lists; and my word that on the fifteenth day of this month I shall be in Rennes, armed and horsed for the tourney. My challenge shall be sent anon.—Courtoise! Take thine ancient comrade to the keep, and find him refreshment ere he proceeds upon his way.”

Courtoise bowed, wearing an expression of mingled pleasure and disapproval, and presently he and the herald left the room together, followed by all the young esquires. After their disappearance the demoiselles also wandered off to their pursuits, and presently Gerault, Eleanore, and Lenore were left alone in the long room. Eleanore stood still, just where she was, and looked once, searchingly, from the face of her son to that of his wife. Then she addressed Gerault: “See that thou come to me to-night, when I am alone in my chamber. I would talk with thee, Gerault.” And with another look that had in it a suggestion of disdain, madame turned and went out of the room.

When she was gone the knight drew a long sigh, and then, with an air of apprehensive inquiry, faced Lenore. At once she rose and, with a very humble courtesy, started also to depart. But Gerault, whose bewilderment at the situation was changing to anxiety, said sharply: “Stay, Lenore! Thou shalt not go till we have spoken together.”

Immediately she returned to her place and sat down. She gave him one swift glance from under her lashes, and then remained in silence, her eyes fixed upon the floor.

At the same time the Seigneur got to his feet and began to pace unevenly up and down the room. His step was sufficient evidence of his agitation; but it was many minutes before he suddenly halted, turning to his wife and saying in a tone of command: “Tell me, Lenore, why thou biddest me go forth into this tournament.”

“Ah, my lord—do not—I—” she paused, and, from flushing vividly, her face grew white again: “Thou wilt be happier in Rennes, my lord.”

“How say you that? Were I not happier at home here with my bride?”

“Asks my lord wherefore?” answered Lenore, in a tone containing something that Gerault could not understand.

“Nay, then, I ask thee naught but this: wouldst thou, all for thyself, of thine own will, have me go? Dost thou in thy heart desire it?”

Lenore drew her head a little high, and looked him full in the face: “For myself, for mine own selfish desires, of mine own will, I entreat thee by that which through thy life thou hast held most dear, to go!”

Gerault stared at her, some vague distrust that was entering his mind continually foiled by the open-eyed clearness of her look. Finally, then, he shrugged his shoulders, and, as he turned away from her, he said: “Be satisfied, madame. I do your bidding. I give you what pleasure I can. In ten days’ time I shall set off; and thou wilt be unfettered in this Crépuscule!”

And with this last ungenerous and angry taunt, the Seigneur, his brain seething with some emotion that he could not define, strode from the room. Lenore rose as he left her, and followed him, unsteadily, halfway to the door. He went out of the Castle without once looking back, and when he was quite gone, the young girl felt her way blindly to the chair where she had sat, and crouching down in it, burst into a flood of repressed and desperate tears.

When Gerault left Lenore’s side, he was no whit happier than she. After the herald had made his announcement of the tourney, and Gerault had begun his reply, it was his intent to refuse to go, though in his secret heart he longed eagerly to be off to that city of gay forgetfulness. But when his wife, Lenore, the clinging child, besought him, with every appearance of sincerity, to leave her, he heard her with less of satisfaction than with surprised disappointment. Now he fought with himself; now he questioned her motive; again he longed for Rennes and the tourney. Finally, there rushed over him the detestable deceit in his own attitude; and he began to curse himself for what, sometimes, he was,—the most intolerant and the most selfish of tyrants. In these varying moods Gerault rode, for the rest of the afternoon, over the dry moors, hawk on wrist, but finding his own thoughts, unhappy as they were, more engrossing than possible quarries. He returned late—when the evening meal was nearly at an end; and he perceived, with dull disappointment, that Lenore was not at table. Madame presently informed him that she lay in bed, sick of a headache; and this was all the conversation in which he indulged while he ate his hurried meal. But as soon as grace was said and the company had risen, Gerault started to the stairs. Instantly his mother caught his sleeve and held him back, saying,—

“Go not to thy room. She has perchance fallen asleep by now; and she should not be wakened, for she hath been very ill. Seek thou rather my bedchamber, and there presently I will come to thee; for I have somewhat that I would say to thee, Gerault.”

Feeling as he had sometimes felt when, in his early boyhood, he had waited punishment for some boyish misdeed, the Seigneur obeyed his mother, and went up to her room, which was now wrapped in close-gathering shadows. Here, a few moments later, Eleanore found him, pacing up and down, his arms folded, his head bent upon his breast, a dark frown upon his brows. The windows were open to the evening, and, like some witchcraft spell, its sweetness entered into Gerault, penetrating to his brain, and once again turning his thoughts to the spirit that haunted all Le Crépuscule for him.

Madame came into the room, drawing the iron-bound door shut behind her, and pushing the tapestry curtain over it. Then, without speaking, she crossed the room, seated herself on her settle beside the window, and fixed her eyes on the moving form of her son. Under her look Gerault grew more restless still; and he was about to break the silence when presently she said, in a low, rather grating tone: “Know, Gerault, that I am grieved with thee.”

He turned to her at once with a little gesture of deprecation; but she went on speaking:

“Thou hast brought home from Rennes a wife: a fair maid and a gentle as any that hath ever lived; and moreover one that loves thee but too well. In her little time of dwelling here she hath, by her quiet, lovely ways, crept close into my heart, that was erstwhile so bitterly empty. And having her here, and seeing her growing devotion to thee, her continual striving to please thee in thine every desire, methought that thou, a knight sworn to chivalry, must needs treat her with more than tenderness. Yet that hast thou not, Gerault. Dieu! Thou’rt all but cruel with her! God knows thy father came to be not over-thoughtful in his love of me. Yet had he neglected and spurned me in our early marriage as thou hast this bride of thine, I had surely made end of myself or ever thou camest into the world. Shame it is to thee and to all mankind how—”

“Madame! Madame!—Forbear!”

At his tone, Eleanore held her peace, while Gerault, after a deep pause, in which he regained his self-control, began,—

“Canst thou remember, my mother, a talk that we—thou and I together in this room—held one afternoon more than a year agone? ’Twas in this room, the day before I went last to Rennes. Thou didst entreat me to bring thee back a wife to be thy daughter in the place of Laure.

“At that hour the idea was impossible to me. Thou knowest—’fore God thou knowest—the suffering that time has never eased for me. A thousand times I had vowed then, a hundred times I swore thereafter, that the image of mine own Lenore should never be replaced within my heart; and it holds there to-day as fair and clear as if it were but yesterday she went.

“Many months passed away, madame, and I saw this golden-haired maiden about Rennes,—in the Ladies’ Gallery in the lists, and at feasts in the Castle; yet I had never a thought in my heart of wedding with her. Then—late in the spring—St. Nazaire sent me message of Laure’s disgrace, her excommunication; and my heart bled for thee. I sent out many men to search my sister, but not one ever gathered trace of her. Then, when there was no further hope of restoring her to thee, the idea of marriage came to me for the first time as a duty—toward thee. My whole soul cried out against it. Lenore de Laval reproached me from the heaven where she dwells. And yet—in the end—for _thy_ sake, madame, I brought home with me the gentle child men call my wife.

“I confess it to thee only: I do not love her. Yet indeed none can say that I have used her ill, save as I could not bring myself falsely to act the ardent lover. If she hath been unhappy, then am I greatly grieved. Yet what hath she not that women do desire in life? What lacks there of honor or of pleasure in her estate? Moreover, if she has lost her own mother, hath she not gained thee, dear lady of mine? Mon Dieu, madame,—think not so ill of me. I swear that for me she yearns not at all. Even this afternoon, when all of you had departed from the long room, she did implore me, with sincerest speech, that I depart at early date for Rennes. How likes you that? And moreover, to all my questioning, she did stoutly deny that my going would be for aught but her own pleasure, and would in no way grieve her heart.” And Gerault stared upon his mother with the assured and exasperated look of a doubly injured man.

Madame Eleanore drew herself together and set her lips in the firm resolve still to treat her son with consideration. When she began to speak, her manner was calm and her voice low and quiet; yet in her eyes there gleamed a fire that was not born of patience. “So, Gerault! Doubtless all thou sayest is sooth to thee; yet I would tell thee this: when thou left’st her alone, I came upon her still sitting in the long room, leaning her head upon the table where thou hadst sat, weeping as if her heart was like to break. And when her sobs were still I brought her up to her room and caused her to remove her garments and to seek her bed, though all the while she shook with inward grief, till Alixe brought her a posset, and bathed her head in elder-flower water, and then, at last, she slept.”

“And gave she no name to thee as cause for her malady?”

“Art thou indeed so ignorant of us? Or is it heartlessness? Wilt thou go to Rennes?”

“Hath she not required me to go? Good Heavens, madame! what wouldst have me do?” he answered with weary impatience.

“Gerault, Gerault, if I could by prayer or anger make thee to understand for one instant only! Ah, ’tis the same tale that every woman has to tell. It was so with me. In my early youth I was brought from bright Laval, where I was a queen of gayety and life, to rule alone over this great Twilight Castle. Thy grandam was dead; and there was no other woman of my station here. In a few months after my home-coming as a bride, thy father rode away to join the army of Montfort in the East. From that time I saw my lord but a few weeks in every year; for the war lasted till I had reached the age of four-and-thirty. Thou camest to cheer my loneliness; and then, long after, Laure. And at last, when Laure was in her first babyhood, seventeen years agone, the long struggle ended at Auray; and then my lord, sore wounded in his last fight, came home. Alas! I was no happier for his coming. He had suffered much, and he was no longer young. We two, so long separated, were almost as strangers one to the other. Thou wast his great pride; dost remember how he loved to have thee near him? And many a time it cut me to the heart to hear the bloody, valorous tales he poured into thine ears; for I knew by them that he meant thee to do what he had done. It was not till he lay in his mortal sickness that we came back one to the other; but he died in my arms, whispering to me such words as I had never had from him before. That last is a sweet memory, Gerault; but the tale is none the less grievous of my young life here. And there is the more pity of it that mine is not the only story of such things. Many and many is the weary life led by some high-born lady in her castle, while her lord fights or jousts or drinks his life out in his own selfishness. Through those long years of the war of the Three Jeannes, I suffered not alone of women; and how I suffered, thou canst never know. Do thou not likewise with thy frail Lenore. Stay with her here a little while, and make her life what it might be made with love.”

Gerault listened in non-committal silence. When she finished he turned and faced her squarely: “Hast made this prate of my father and thee to Lenore?” he asked severely.

“Gerault!” The exclamation escaped involuntarily; when it was out Eleanore bit her lip and drew herself up haughtily. “Thou’rt insolent,” she said in a tone that she would have used to an inferior.

In that moment her son found something in her to admire, but the man and master in him was all alive. “Madame, we will waste no further words. I crave the honor to wish you a good-night.” And with a profound and ironical bow, he turned from the room, leaving Eleanore alone to the darkness, and to what was a defeat as bitter as any she had ever known.

Through the watches of the night this woman did not pray, but sat and meditated on the immense question that she had herself raised, and to which she had not the courage to give the true answer. Through her nearest and dearest she had learned the natures of men, knew full well their only aims and interest: prowess in arms, hunting, hawking, drinking, and, when they were weary, dalliance with their women. But was this _all_? Was this all there was for any woman in the mind of the man that loved her? The idea of rebellion against the scorn of men was not at all in her mind. She only wondered sadly how she and others of her sex came to be born so keenly sentient, so open to heart-wounds as they were. And she divined that her question burned no less in the brain of the young Lenore than in her own, though neither of them ever spoke of it together. Nor did either make any roundabout inquiries as to Gerault’s intentions with regard to Rennes. Not so, however, the demoiselles of the Castle. Courtoise was under a hot fire of inquisition throughout most of the following two days; but for once he himself was uncertain of his lord’s move, and presently there was a little air of joy creeping over the place in the shape of a hope that the Seigneur was going to remain in Crépuscule. This, indeed, was the secret idea of Courtoise; and only David the dwarf refused to entertain a suspicion that Gerault would not ride to Rennes for the tourney.

David judged well; for Gerault went to Rennes. Lenore knew on the tenth of the month that he would go. Madame remained in doubt till the day before the departure.

On the morning of the twelfth the whole Castle was astir by dawn. Gerault and his squire, bravely arrayed, came into the great hall at five o’clock, and sat down to their early meal. On the right hand of the Seigneur was Lenore, not eating, only looking about her on the fresh morning light, and again into Gerault’s face. She was not under any stress of emotion. She was, rather, very dull and heavy-eyed. Yet down in her heart lay a smothered pain that she felt must come forth before long, in what form she could not tell. She and Gerault did not talk much together. There was a little strain between them that was none the less certain because it was indefinable, and it was a relief to the young wife when madame finally appeared. Lenore saw Eleanore’s face with something of surprise. Never had it been so cold, so expressionless, so like a piece of chiselled marble; and looking upon her son, it grew yet harder, yet colder. But when madame, after some little parley with Courtoise, turned finally to Lenore, the child-wife found something in that face that came dangerously near to melting her apathy, and freeing the flood of grief that lay deep in her heart.