Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The Castle of Twilight

THE CASTLE OF TWILIGHT

By MARGARET HORTON POTTER

With six Illustrations by Ch. Weber

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO

1903

Copyright

A. C. McClurg & Co.

1903

Published September 26, 1903

DESIGNED, ARRANGED, AND PRINTED

BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

TO

G. M. McB.

WHOSE MUSIC SUGGESTED THE STORY

This little volume is faithfully

inscribed

[Click on score for music playback.]

Table · of contents

List · of illustrations

The decorations for title-page, end-papers, and chapter initials are by Miss Mabel Harlow

FOREWORD

Wistfully I deliver up to you my simple story, knowing that the first suggestion of “historical novel” will bring before you an image of dreary woodenness and unceasing carnage. Yet if you will have the graciousness but to unlock my castle door you will find within only two or three quiet folk who will distress you with no battles nor strange oaths. Even in the days of rival Princes and never-ending wars there dwelt still a few who took no part in the moil of life, but lived with gentle pleasures and unvoiced sorrows, somewhat as you and I; wherefore, I pray you, cross the moat. The drawbridge is down for you, and will not be raised, if, after introduction to the Chatelaine, you desire speedily to retreat.

M. H. P.

The CASTLE of TWILIGHT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DESOLATION OF AGE

It was mid-April: a sunny afternoon. A flood of golden light, borne on gusts of sweet, chilly air, poured through the open windows of the Castle into a high-vaulted, massively furnished bedroom, hung with tapestries, and strewn with dry rushes. A heavy silence that was less a thing of the moment than a part of the general atmosphere hovered about the room; and it was not lessened by the unceasing murmur of ocean waves breaking upon the face of the cliff on which the Castle stood. This sound held in it a note of unutterable melancholy. Indeed, despite the sunlight, the sparkle of the waves, and the fragrance of the fresh spring air, this whole building, the culminating point of a long slope of landscape, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of loneliness, of sadness, of lifelessness, that found full expression in the attitude of the black-robed woman who knelt alone in the high-vaulted bedroom.

Eleanore was kneeling at her priedieu. Madame Eleanore knelt at her priedieu, and did not pray. Nay, the great grief, the unvoiced bitterness in her heart, killed prayer. For, henceforth, there was one near and unbearably dear to her who must be praying for evermore. And it was this thought and the vista of her future lonely years that denied her, even as she knelt, the consolation of religion.

To the still solitude of her bedchamber, and always to the foot of her crucifix, the chatelaine of Le Crépuscule was accustomed to bring her griefs; and there had been many griefs and some very bitter ones in the thirty-four years that she had reigned as mistress over the Castle. But this last was one that, trained though she was in the ways of sorrow, defied all comfort, denied the right of consolation, and forbade even the relief of an appeal to the All-merciful. Laure, her daughter, the star of her solitude, the youth and the joy of her life, the object of all the blind devotion of which her mother-soul was capable, had this morning entered upon her novitiate at the convent of the Virgins of the Magdalen. Although Madame Eleanore’s family was celebrated for its piety, though many a generation of Lavals and Crépuscules had rendered a daughter to the eternal worship of God, there were still no records left in either family of a great mother-grief when the daughter left her home. But madame, Laval as she was, Crépuscule as she had learned to be, could not find it in her heart to praise God for the loss of her child.

Once again, after many years, years that she could look back upon now as filled with broad content, she was alone. Not since, many, many years ago, she had come to the Castle as a girl-bride, wife of a military lord, had such utter desolation held her in its bonds,—such desolation as, after the coming of her two children, she had thought never to feel again. In the days after the Seigneur’s first early departure for Rennes, without her, she had felt as now. It came back very vividly to her memory, how he had ridden away for the capital, the city of war, of arms, of glittering shield and piercing lance, of tourney and laughter and song; how she had longed in silence to ride thither at his side; how she had wept when he was really gone; how she had watched bitterly, day after day, for his return up the steep road that came out of the forest on the edge of the sand-downs below. Clearly indeed did her youth return to Eleanore as she knelt here, in the barred sunlight, alone with her unheeding crucifix. And intertwined with this memory was the new sense of blinding sorrow, the loss of Laure.

The reality, as it came to her, seemed even now vague and impossible. Laure, her girl, her strong, wild, adventurous, high-hearted, fearless girl, to become a nun! Laure, of whom, in her own way, Eleanore had been accustomed to think as she thought of the great white gulls that veered, through sunlight and storm, on straight-stretched pinions, along the rocky coast, as a creature of light, of air, above all of perfect, indestructible freedom! This, her Laure, to become a nun! Spite of what the Bishop of St. Nazaire had so earnestly told her, how, in all strong natures, there are strong antitheses and quiet, governing depths that no outer turbulence can disclose, Eleanore rebelled at the disposal that had been made of this nature. She knew herself too well to believe that her daughter could renounce all the joys of youth and of life without a single after-pang.

After this early mother-thought for the child’s state, Eleanore’s self-grief returned again with redoubled force; and her brain conjured up a vision of the future,—that great, shadowy future, that wrapped her heart around in a cold and deadening despair.

The April wind blew higher through the room, catching the tapestry curtains of the immense bed and waving them about like blue banners. The bars of sunlight mellowed and broadened over the shrunken rushes and the smooth stones of the floor. The surf boomed louder as the tide advanced. And Eleanore, still upon her knees, rocked her body in her helpless rebellion, and found it in her heart to question the righteous wisdom of her God. She did not, however, come quite to this; for which, afterwards, she found it expedient to give thanks to the same deity. Her solitude was unexpectedly broken. There came a knock upon the door, which immediately afterwards opened, and Gerault, her son, entered the room.

This fourth Seigneur of Le Crépuscule, a dark-browed, lean, and rather handsome fellow, clad in half armor and carrying on his wrist a falcon, jessed and belled, was the first of Eleanore’s two children. She reverenced him as his father’s successor; she held affection for him because she had borne him; and she respected him and his wishes because he was a man that commanded respect. But perhaps it was this very respect, which had in it something of distance, that killed in her the overwhelming love which she had always felt for his sister Laure, her youngest and beloved.

Gerault, seeing his mother’s attitude, stopped short in the doorway. “Madame, I crave pardon! I had not known you were at prayer,” he said.

Eleanore rose from her knees a little hastily. “Nay, Gerault, I was not at prayer. ’Tis an old custom of mine to meditate in that place. Enter thou and sit with me for a little.”

Gerault bowed silently and accepted her invitation by seating himself near one of the windows on a wooden settle. His silence seemed to demand speech from his mother. But Eleanore, once on her feet, had begun slowly to pace the floor of her room, at the same time losing herself again in her own thoughts.

Without speaking and without any discomfort at the continued silence, Gerault watched his mother—contemplated her, rather—as she walked. Often he had felt a pride—a pride that suggested patronage—in that walk of madame’s. Never, in any woman, had he seen such a carriage, such conscious poise, such dignity, such command. In his heart her son, somewhat given to irreverent observation and analysis of those about him, had named her the “Quiet-Browed,” and the very fact that he could have seen somewhat below the surface and yet named her thus, was evidence enough of her powers of self-control. It was he who finally broke the silence between them.

“Well, madame, the change in our house hath taken place. Laure’s new life is safely begun; and she hath given what she could to the honor of our race. Now that it is done, I return to Rennes, to the side of my Lord Duke.”

Eleanore made no pause in her walk, nor did she betray by the slightest gesture her feeling at the announcement. Too many times before had she experienced this same sensation. After a few seconds she asked quietly: “When do you go?”

In spite of her self-control, her voice had been a strain off the key, and now Gerault looked at her keenly, asking: “There is a reason why I should not ride to Rennes? I have not thy permission to go?”

Eleanore paused in her walk to turn and look at him. There was just a suggestion of scorn in her attitude. “Reason! Permission! Was ever a reason why a Crépuscule might not fare forth to Rennes, or one that asked permission of a woman ere he went?”

Again Gerault looked at her, this time in that dignified disapproval that man uses to cover an unlooked-for mortification. And the Seigneur was decidedly lofty as he said: “I have given thee pain, madame, though of how, or wherefore, I am wofully ignorant.”

“Pain, Gerault? Pain?” Eleanore repressed herself again and immediately resumed her walk. In a few seconds the calm, quiet dignity returned, her mask was replaced, every vestige of her feeling hidden, and she had become once more the châtelaine of unvoiced loneliness. Then she went on speaking: “Pain, Gerault? Surely not. Know I not enough of Rennes that I should not be well content to have thee in that lordly place, with thy rightful companions, men of thy blood? Shall I not send thee gayly forth again to that trysting-place of knightly arms?”

“And yet, madame, I did but now surprise in thy face a look of sorrow, of some unhappiness, that is new to it.”

“Well, even so?”

“Ah, yes! It is Laure’s departure. Yet that must not be too much mourned. Laure’s wild ways had come to be a source of uneasiness to both of us at times. ’Tis true that there is lost an alliance that might have brought much honor to Le Crépuscule. By the favor of my Lord Duke, Laure might have wed with Grantmesnil, Senlis, Angers itself, perhaps; and there was ever Laval.—Yet—”

He paused musingly, not seeing the look that had come back into the face of madame. Only when she stopped again and turned to him did he utter a soft exclamation, half surprise and half helpless apology. But Eleanore, smiling at him sadly, began, in that voice that had long been tuned to the stillness of the Castle: “If I could but make thee understand, Gerault! If I could make thee look upon my hours of loneliness here—and see—Gerault, it is not a matter of alliance, or of honor, or of dishonor, with Laure. It is that she was my child, my daughter, my companion—how adored!—here, in this—this great Castle of Twilight. Neither thou nor any man can know what our lives are.—But think, Gerault—think of me and of the Castle after thou art gone. What is there for me here? The tasks that I invent to fill the hours are useless to deaden thought. They are not changed from the occupations of thirty years ago. Nor, methinks, have women known aught else than spinning, weaving, sewing, spinning again, since the days of the earliest kings,—the Kings of Jerusalem.—And day after day through the long years I dwell here in this barren spot—dependent on others for what happiness I am to get in my life. And now—now the Church, in which always my hope of another, better life hath lain, taketh my child from me. Let then the Church give me something in place of her! Let the Church pay back something of its debt. And thou also, my son,—give me some help to live through the unending days of thy absence in Rennes.”

“I, madame!—the Church!—What art thou saying?”

“Hast thou not heard me?”

“I have heard. But what shall I do, my mother?”

“Listen, Gerault. The Church hath taken a daughter from me. Thou, by the aid of the Church, canst give me another. Gerault, thou must marry. Marry, my son. Bring thy wife home to me!”

Gerault sprang to his feet with an expression on his face that his mother had never before called there. For a moment he looked at her, his eyes saying what his lips would not. Then, gradually, the fire in his face died down, and he reseated himself slowly on the settle, while the bird on his wrist, a wild hagard, fluttered its wings, and dug its talons painfully into the knight’s flesh.

“Marry!” said Gerault, at length, in a voice that sounded strange to his own ears. “Marry! Hast thou forgotten?”

“Nay, I have not forgotten; nor has anyone in the Castle. But thou, Gerault, must forget. It is now five years since, and thou art more than come to man’s estate. Even then thou wast not young.—Nay, Gerault, I do not forget that cruel thing. Yet we must all go.—And ere I die I must see thee wed. ’Tis not only for myself, child. It is for the house, and the line of Crépuscule. Shall it be lost in four generations?”

Frowning, Gerault rose. “Well, madame, not as yet have I seen in Brittany the maid that I would wed, barring always—” He shook himself to dissipate the memory that was on him. “To-morrow I and Courtoise ride forth to Rennes. Let me now leave thee once more to thy meditations.”

Gerault went to the door, opened it, turned to look once at his mother, whose face he could not see, and then, with an audible sigh, went quietly away. Each was ignorant of the other’s feelings. As Eleanore moved over toward the open windows that looked off upon the sea, her eyes, tear-blinded, saw nothing of the broad plain of blue and sparkling gold that stretched infinitely away before her. Nor did she dream of the spirit of reawakened bitterness and desolation that her words had conjured up in Gerault’s heart. But the Seigneur’s calm and unruffled expression concealed a very storm of reawakened misery as he descended the great stone staircase of the Castle, passed through the empty lower hall, and so out into the courtyard.

This courtyard was always the liveliest spot about the chateau. Le Crépuscule itself was very large, and its adjacent buildings were on a corresponding scale. Like all the feudal fortress-castles of its time, it was almost a little city in itself. It dated from the year 1203, and had been built by the first lord of the name, Bernard, a left-handed scion of Coucy, who had been called Crépuscule from his colors, two contrasting shades of gray. Since his time, each of its lords had added to its strength or its convenience, till now, in the year 1380, it was the strongest chateau on the South Breton coast. One side was built on the very edge of an immense cliff against which the Atlantic surf had beaten unceasingly through the ages. The other three sides were well protected, first by a heavy wall that surrounded the whole courtyard with its various buildings, beyond which came a broad strip of garden land and pasturage, bounded on the far side by the second, or lower wall, and a dry moat. The keep was of a size proportionate to the Castle; and the number of men-at-arms that were kept in it taxed the coffers of the rather meagre estate to the utmost for food and pay.

When Gerault entered the courtyard a girl stood drawing water from the round, stone well. Two or three henchmen lolled in the doorway of the keep, chaffing a peasant who had come up the hill from one of the manor farms carrying eggs in a big basket. Just outside the stables, which occupied the whole east side of the courtyard, a boy stood rubbing down a sleek, white palfrey. All of these people respectfully saluted their lord, who returned them rather a curt recognition as he passed round the west tower on his way to a little narrow building just in front of the north gate, in which his falcons were housed through the winter. Gerault had a great passion for hawking, and his birds were always objects of solicitude with him. He and Courtoise, his squire, were accustomed to spend much time together in this little building, and in the open-air falconry on the terrace outside the north gate, where young birds or newly captured ones were trained.

Just now Gerault stood in the doorway of the falcon-house, looking around him for Courtoise, whom he had thought to find within. He was speaking to the bird on his wrist, his mind still occupied with the recent talk with his mother, when, through the gate, came a burst of laughter and song, and he raised his eyes to see a giddy company swaying toward him in the measure of a “carole”[^[1]] led by Courtoise and Laure’s foster-sister, Alixe la Rieuse. Moving a little out of their way he stood and watched the group go by,—the demoiselles and the squires of the Castle household, retained by his mother as company for herself, also to be trained in etiquette according to their several stations. And a pretty enough company of youth and gayety they were: Berthe, Yseult, Isabelle, Viviane, daughters all of noble houses; with Roland of St. Bertaux, Louis of Florence, Robert Meloc, and Guy d’Armenonville, called “le Trouvé.” But, of them all, Alixe, surnamed the Laughing One, was the brightest of eye, the warmest of color, and the lightest of foot.

[1]. A “carole” was originally a dance to which the dancers sang their own accompaniment.

As they went by, Gerault signalled to his squire, Courtoise, and the young fellow would have disengaged himself immediately from his companions, but that Alixe suddenly broke her step, dropped the hand of Robert Meloc, who was behind her, and leaving the company, ran to Gerault’s side, dragging Courtoise with her. The dance ceased while the young people stood still, staring at their erstwhile leaders. Alixe, however, impatiently motioned them on.

“Go back to the Castle with your ‘Roi qui ne ment pas.’[^[2]] I will come soon.”

[2]. An old-time game.

Obedient to her command, the little company resumed their quaint song, and, with steps that lagged a little, passed into the Castle, leaving their arbitrary leader behind them, with the Seigneur and his squire.

Gerault was silent till the young people had gone. Then he turned to Alixe, but, before he had time to speak, she broke in hastily:

“Let me go with you to the falcons. You must see Bec-Hardi sit upon my wrist, and attack his pât on the rope.”

“Diable!—Bec-Hardi!—Thou hast a genius with the birds, Alixe. The hagard will not move for me.” Gerault was all attention to her now.

Alixe did not answer his praise, but started quickly forward toward the gate through which she had just come, beyond which was the strip of turf where the falcons lived in summer. Gerault and Courtoise followed her at a slower pace, and she caught some disjointed words spoken by the Seigneur behind her:—“Rennes”—“to-morrow”—“horses.”

As these came to her ears, Alixe’s steps grew laggard, for she had put the thoughts together, and instantly her mood changed from golden irresponsibility to dull and dreary melancholy. For a long time she had concealed in her heart the deep sorrow that she felt at the prospective loss of her life-playmate, Laure, now actually gone, and gone forever. She had resigned herself to the thought of solitary adventures on moor and cliff, and lonely sails on the breezy, treacherous bay, in a more than treacherous boat,—such wild and risky amusements as she and the daughter of Le Crépuscule had loved to indulge together. Laure was gone, and she had kept herself from tears. But now—now, at these words of Gerault’s, there suddenly rose before her a vivid picture of life in the Castle without either brother or sister. Toward Gerault she had no such feeling as that which she had held for Laure. He was a man to her, and the fact made a vast difference. At times she entertained for him a violent enthusiasm; at other times she treated him with infinite scorn. But till now she had never confessed, even to herself, how much interest he had added to the monotonous Castle life. Considering her wayward nature, it was certainly anomalous that, in her first rush of displeasure, there came to her the thought of Eleanore, the mother now doubly bereft. And for madame she felt a sympathy that was entirely new.

Gerault and his squire reached the outdoor falconry before Alixe, whom they perceived to have fallen into one of her sudden reveries. Accustomed to her rapid changes of mood, neither man took much heed of her slow steps and bent head. And when she reached the falconry and saw the birds, her interest in them brought over her again a wave of animation.

The outdoor falconry was a long strip of turf that lay between the flower-terrace and the kitchen-garden. Into this turf had been driven about twenty heavy stakes, to which were nailed wooden cross-pieces. On nearly every one of these a falcon perched, and a strong cord, tied about one leg, fastened each to his own stake. At sight of their master, whom they knew perfectly well, all the birds set up a peculiar, harsh cry, at the same time eagerly flapping their wings, appealing, as best they could, for an hour or two of freedom. Alixe ran at once down to the end of the second row of stakes, where sat a half-grown bird, striking viciously at his perch with his iron beak.

Courtoise and Gerault ceased their conversation when Alixe went up to this bird and addressed it in a curious jargon of Latin and Breton-French. Courtoise betrayed an admiring interest when she stooped to lay her hand on the bird’s feathers; and Gerault called involuntarily,—

“Have a care, Alixe!”

The girl, however, had her way with the creature. At sound of her voice it became attentive. At the touch of her hand it half raised its wings, the motion indicating expectant delight. In a moment more it had hopped upon the girl’s wrist, and sat there, swaying and preening contentedly.

“Sang Dieu, Alixe, thou hast done that well! Thou sayest he will also attack the pât from your hand?”

Alixe merely nodded. To all appearances, she was wholly engrossed with the bird, which she continued to handle. Gerault and Courtoise had come close to her side, though the falcon betrayed its displeasure at their approach. All three of them had been silent for some seconds, when Alixe turned her green eyes upon the Seigneur, and, looking at him with a glance that carried discomfort with it, said in a very precise and cutting tone:

“So you leave Le Crépuscule to-morrow, Gerault? And for how long?”

“That I cannot tell,” answered Gerault, exhibiting no annoyance. “For as long a time as Duke Jean will accept my services.”

“Ah! then there will be fighting. I had not heard of a war. Tell me of it.”

Gerault became suddenly embarrassed and correspondingly displeased. “Of what import can it be to you, a woman, whether there is war or peace?” he inquired.

“Oh, there is great import.”

“Prithee, what may it be?”

“This: that an there were indeed a war thou mightest be forgiven thy great selfishness in going forth to pleasure, leaving thy mother here in her loneliness and sorrow; whereas—”

“Silence, Alixe! Thine insolence merits the whip,” cried Courtoise.

“Peace, boy!” said Gerault, shortly, and forthwith turned again to the demoiselle. “And is not my mother long accustomed to this life, and well content with it? Is she not lady of a great castle, mistress of enviable estates? Hath she not a position to be proud of? From her speech and thine one might think—” he snapped his fingers impatiently.—“Come you with me, Alixe. Let us walk here together on the turf, while I say to you certain things. Thou, Courtoise, return to the Castle if thou wilt.”

The squire, however, chose to remain in the field, and stood leaning against the wall, watching the falcons at his feet, and whistling under his breath for his own amusement. Alixe replaced Bec-Hardi, screaming angrily and flapping its wings, and moved off beside Gerault, her long red houppelande and mantle trailing upon the grass round her feet, the veil from her filet flowing behind her nearly to the ground. Long time these two, Lord of Le Crépuscule and his almost sister, walked together in the sunny light of the late afternoon. And long Courtoise the squire watched them as they went. Although Gerault had said, somewhat in ire, that he had a matter to speak of with her, it was Alixe that talked the most, and from his manner it could be seen that Gerault was fallen very much under the influence of her peculiar insistence. What it was they spoke of, Courtoise could only guess—and fear. For, though he might hold in his heart some sympathy with madame in her loneliness, yet the squire was a man, and young; and his young thoughts drew with delight the picture of Rennes’ gayeties in the summer-time, when no war was toward and the court alive with merriment. Indeed, it was not very wonderful that he prayed to be off on the morrow; but the occasional glimpse that he got of his lord’s face carried doubt into his heart.

As the squire stood there by the wall, musing, Madame Eleanore herself came out of the courtyard into the field. Her rosary hung from her waist, and in her hand was a little volume of Latin prayers. In some way, of which she was probably unconscious, the placid manner of her as she came into the field for her evening walk caused Courtoise’s idle dreams of gayety to vanish away, and the present, so tinged with the spirit of sweet melancholy, to become the only reality. The squire at once advanced toward his lady, while, ere he reached her, Alixe and Gerault had halted at her side.

“Indeed, my mother, thou art well come hither at this time. Prithee join us in our walk. For some time past Alixe and I have been speaking of thee. See, the air is sweet, for it comes off the fields to-night.”

“Indeed, ’tis sweet—sweeter than summer,” said Eleanore, smiling as she joined the twain. “But mayhap I shall break your pleasure by coming with you, for you are gay and young, and I—”

They moved on without having noticed him, and Courtoise lost the rest of Eleanore’s speech. But the squire remained in the field, watching the three move back and forth in the deepening dusk. When they came toward him for the last time, and passed through the gate in the north wall, returning to the Castle, all three faces were as calm as madame’s, and Courtoise permitted himself only one sigh for the lost summer at Rennes.

Oddly enough, the squire’s regrets proved to be premature, for immediately after the evening meal he was summoned by Gerault to the Seigneur’s room, to make ready for the journey. Gerault did not deign to inform his squire of the substance of his talk in the fields, but from the tranquillity of his manner Courtoise could not but perceive that everything had gone well. It was a late hour when all the necessary preparations had been made; and then the two, lord and squire, went together to the chapel and were there confessed by Anselm, the steward-priest; after which they bade each other a good-night, and sought their rest.

By sunrise, next morning, the whole Castle had assembled at the drawbridge, to say God-speed to their departing lord. Madame Eleanore, in bliault, houppelande, mantle, and coif all of black and white, held Gerault’s stirrup-cup, and smiled as she spoke with him. There was a chorus of chattering demoiselles and a boyish clattering of swords and little armor-pieces from the young squires, as Gerault buckled on his shield, whereon was wrought the motto and device of Crépuscule. Courtoise had already fastened to his lord the golden spurs. And now the two were mounted and ready, Gerault with lance in rest and white reins gathered on his horse’s neck; Courtoise, brimming with delight, now and then giving his steed a heel in flank that caused him to rear and curvet with graceful spirit. For the last time Gerault bent to his mother’s lips, and for the last time he looked vainly over the company for a glimpse of Alixe, his recent mentor. Finally his spurs went home. The drawbridge was down before him, the portcullis raised. Amid a chorus of farewell cries, he and Courtoise swept away together, over the bridge and down the long, gentle hill, and out upon the Rennes road, which, at some twelve miles from Le Crépuscule, passed the priory-convent of Les Vierges de la Madeleine.

When the twain were gone, and the group prepared to disperse,—the squires-at-arms to their sword-practice under the captain of the keep, the sighing demoiselles to their long morning of weaving and embroidery,—Alixe suddenly appeared from the watch-tower close at hand, inquiring for Madame Eleanore.

“Methinks she hath retreated to her room, to say her prayers for the Seigneur’s safe journey,” Berthe told her. And Alixe, with a nod of thanks, ran to the Castle, and ascended to madame’s room.

The door was open, for madame was not at prayer. She stood at the open window, looking out upon the sea. Alixe could not see her face, but from the line of her shoulders she read much of her lady’s heart.

“Madame,” she said, in a half-whisper.

Eleanore turned quickly. “Alixe!”

“Madame Eleanore—mother—”

A terrible sob broke from the older woman’s throat, and suddenly she fell upon her knees beside a wooden settle, and, burying her face in her hands, finally gave way to her desolation. Alixe, who had opened her heart, now comforted her as best she could, soothing her, caressing her, whispering to her in a magnetic, gentle voice, till madame’s grief had been nearly washed away. Then the young girl said, softly, in her ear:

“Think, madame! ’tis now but eleven days till thou mayest ride out to Laure at the priory. And there thou canst talk with her alone, and for as long as thou wilt. Also, when her novitiate is at an end, she may come here to thee, once in a fortnight, for so the Mother-prioress hath said.”

Eleanore held Alixe’s hand close to her breast, and while she stroked it, a little convulsively, she said, with returning self-control: “I thank thee—I thank thee—Alixe, for thy good comfort.” Then, in a different tone, she added, with a little sigh: “Eleven days—eleven ages—how many others have I still to spend—alone?”

CHAPTER TWO
THE SILENCE OF YOUTH

The priory-convent of the Virgins of the Magdalen was as old as any nunnery in Brittany of its repute. It had been founded in the early days of the tenth Louis of France and his good lady of Burgundy, long before the death of the last of the Dreux lords of the dukedom. It was celebrated for more than its age, however; for through three centuries it had held in ecclesiastic Brittany, for its wealth, its exclusiveness, and, above either of these things, its unswerving chastity, a place as unique as it was gratifying. In the year 1381 no breath of scandal had ever disturbed its fragrant atmosphere. Moreover, though this was a fact not much regarded by people in authority, it was a remarkably comfortable little house, of excellent architecture and ample room for the practice of any amount of worship. Its situation, however, was lonely. It stood nearly at the end of the Rennes coast road, on the outskirts of a thick forest, twenty miles from the town of St. Nazaire-by-the-sea, and twelve from the Chateau of Le Crépuscule. And it was here, in this pleasant if austere retreat, that many a noble lady of Laval and Crépuscule had ended her youth and worn her life away in the endeavor to attain undying sanctity.

On a certain afternoon in this mid-spring of 1381, the very day, indeed, that Lord Gerault took to the Rennes road to ease his ennui, a little company of nuns sat out in the convent garden, embroidering away their recreation time. The day was exquisite: sunny, a little chilly, its breeze laden with the rare perfume of awakening summer. The garden, at this season of the year, was a place of wondrous beauty, redolent of rich, pregnant soil, and all shimmering with the misty green of tender grass and countless leaf-buds, from the midst of which a few flowers, pale primroses and crocuses and a hyacinth or two, peered forth, starring the new-planted beds with the first fruits of this new union of earth and sky.

The spirit of the spring ruled supreme over all natural things. Only the creatures of God, the self-consecrated nuns, sat in the midst of this wonder of the young world, untouched by it. Heedless to the uttermost of this greatest of worldly blessings, they sat plying their needles in and out of their bright-colored, ecclesiastical fabrics, listening, in their dull and dreamy way, to the voice of one of their number who was droning out to them for the thousandth time the old and long-familiar laws of their order, expressed in the “Rhymed Rule of St. Benedict.” One only among them seemed not of their mood. This was a young girl, white-robed like all the rest, her unveiled head proclaiming her novitiate. As became her station she bent decorously to her task, and it had taken a close observer to see and read all the little signs she gave of consciousness of the world around her, the green, growing things, and the liquid bird-songs that came trilling out of the forest near at hand. Probably not even the most skilled of readers could have recognized all the meaning in the long, slow looks, half wondrous and half probing, with which, every now and again, she traversed the circle of faces about her. Her self-restraint was very nearly flawless, and was successfully maintained throughout the long period of recreation; so that not one of her companions guessed the relief she felt when the first clang of the vesper-bell roused them from their trance-like dulness. But the young girl wondered a little at herself when she perceived that her brows were damp with the sweat of the constraint.

At this time Laure of Le Crépuscule was sixteen years of age, and pretty as a flower to look upon. She was slim and white-faced, with immense, limpid brown eyes that were wont to move rather slowly, and burnished brown hair hanging in twists to her knees: an object for men to rave over, had any man worth so calling ever set eyes upon her. She was young enough and pure enough to be of unquestioning innocence; and, until now, the fiery life in her had found sufficient outlet in unlimited bodily exercise. She had seen nothing of real life, and never dreamed of the talent she possessed for it. It was from her own heart that the wish to consecrate herself to the eternal worship of God had come; for she believed that in this way she should find a haven for those terrible and fathomless mental storms of which she had weathered many in her young life, and of which her own mother never so much as dreamed. Utterly ignorant of her real self, she was yet a girl of strong intellect, of great versatility, of over-weening passions, and withal as feminine a creature as the Creator ever fashioned. Both her temperament and her appearance more resembled the dwellers of the far South—Provence or even Navarre—than the children of the rugged, chilly shores of northern Brittany; for her skin had the dark, creamy pallor of the South, and her eyes held none of the keen fire that glows in the North, while her hair grew low above her smooth, white brow.

Laure’s temperament was dramatically mobile. She adapted herself almost unconsciously to any mode or situation of life, and this, though she did not know it, was all that she was doing now. It was with real, if subdued pleasure that she went through the services of the day. From matins, which, at this period of the year, began at the cheerless hour of four in the morning, till compline, at eight in the evening, when the church bell tolled the end of another day of prayer, Laure’s nature was under a kind of religious spell, which she and those about her had joyfully interpreted as a true vocation.

The first eleven days of Laure’s convent life passed away in comparative calmness; and she found no weariness in them. On the twelfth, Madame Eleanore rode in from Le Crépuscule to see her daughter. She was admitted to the convent as speedily as if the little lay sister had known the devouring eagerness of the mother-heart; and because she was a lady of consequence, and because she was known to be very generous to the Church, and especially because the Bishop of St. Nazaire was her close friend, she was not left to wait in the reception-room, but conducted straight to the Prioress’ cell.

Mère Piteuse received Madame Eleanore with anxious cordiality. After their greetings the guest seated herself, and was obliged to keep silence for a moment before she could ask quietly,—

“And Laure, Reverend Mother,—how fares my child? Is she content with you?” Eleanore’s heart throbbed with unconfessed hope as she asked this question. For if Laure was not content, she might return at will to the Castle, her home, and her mother’s heart.

But the Prioress returned Eleanore’s look with a smile of satisfaction. “In a moment Laure will come hither. I have sent for her. Then thou shalt learn from her own lips how well her life goes. Never, I think, hath our priory received a new daughter that showed herself so happy in her vocation. We shall call her name Angelique at her consecration.”

Eleanore felt her body grow cold, and her head swim. Her face, however, betrayed nothing. Her little girl, then, was really gone! Laure, the wild bird, was tamable. She—could she become “Angelique”?

Neither madame nor the Prioress spoke again till there was a sound of gentle footsteps in the corridor, followed by a light tap on the wooden door of the cell.

“Enter!” cried the Prioress; and Laure came quietly in.

First of all she bowed to Mère Piteuse. Then, as Eleanore involuntarily held out her arms, the girl went into them, and kissed her mother with a warmth and a sweetness that perhaps Eleanore had not known from her before. At the same moment the Prioress rose quietly, and left the room. The instant that she was gone, Eleanore seized the girl in a still closer embrace, and held her tightly and more tightly to her breast.

“Laure, my darling! Laure, my sweet child! how hath my heart yearned for thee! How hath thy name lain ever on my lips while I slept, and been enshrined in my heart by day!”

The young girl’s arms wound themselves about her mother’s neck, and she laid her head upon that shoulder where it had been wont to rest in her babyhood. And Laure sighed a little, not unhappily, but like a child tired of play.

“Laure, wilt thou remain here in the convent? Art thou happy? Dost thou wish it, or wilt thou come home again to Crépuscule?”

A sudden image of the gray Castle, with its vast hall, and the great fire blazing in the chimney-place within, and all the well-known figures assembled there for a meal,—Alixe, Gerault, the demoiselles and young squires headed by Courtoise, and the burly men-at-arms that had played with her and carried her about as a little child,—all the long-familiar, comfortable scenes of her old life came before the girl’s eye. And then—then she drew a little breath and answered her mother, unfaltering: “’Tis beautiful here, and sweet and holy withal. I am content, dear mother. I will remain.”

“And hast thou, then, the vocation in thy heart, whereby some souls are claimed of God from birth to death, and find the utmost of their happiness in His communion?”

Laure’s great eyes fixed themselves upon the mother’s sad face as she replied again, very softly: “Yea, my mother. That, from my heart, do I believe.”

Eleanore sighed deeply, and then quickly smiled again. “Think not that I mourn, my daughter, for having yielded thee up to the Church. May this blessed spirit remain in thee, bringing thee everlasting peace.”

Then, while Laure still clung to her, the mother herself put the closely clasped arms away from her neck, and drew the novice to her feet. “Now, my Laure, I must go. But my thoughts are still left with thee.”

“But thou wilt come, mother?—In ten days’ time thou wilt come to me again?”

“Yea, sith it is permitted by the rules that I see thee once more, I will surely come,” she answered quietly.

“Laure will greatly rejoice at thy coming,” said the Prioress, gently, from the doorway.

So Eleanore renewed her promise, and shortly after rode away from the priory gate, into the thick wood through which ran the road to Crépuscule.

Her mother’s visit brought Laure two days of extremest homesickness and yearning. Then she regained her independence, and began to find a new delight in her surroundings. The perfect peace of it, the infinite, delightful detail of worship, with its multifarious candle-points, and its continual clouds of fragrant incense, all wrought together into a life of undeviating regularity, brought to the novice a sense of peculiar safety and freedom from vexation or care that was quite new to her, for all her youth. The day began with matins, repeated by each nun alone in her cell. Laure had been given a room in a corner of the priory, at the very end of the corridor of novices, and she gained therefrom an added sense of exclusiveness and seclusion. She had not once been late in her answer to the matins bell, and the mistress of novices, passing Laure’s cell on her first round of the day, had never failed to find her praying. Laure came of a pious house, and had known her prayers, all the forms of them, long before she entered the priory. They required no thought in the repetition, and therefore there was many a morning when she played the parrot at her desk, either too sleepy, or too much occupied with thoughts and dreams, to heed the familiar addresses to God. This was not entirely a fault, perhaps. The mornings came very early in these days, and there were wonderful things to be seen through her cell-window. She saw the dawn, golden-girdled, garbed in flowing rose-color, unlock the eastern portals of the sky. She saw stars and moon glimmer faintly and more faint, and finally sink to rest under the high, clear green of the morning heaven. Last of all, over the feathery line of trees that made a horizon for her at her cell-window, she could see the first dazzling ladder of the sun lifted up to lean against the east. And then Laure would long for the murmur of devotion to be stilled in the Abbey, for sun-mists were filling the Heavens, and from the forest the bird-chorus rose to a full-throated tutti, in its hymn of glorification to the new day.

This morning benediction that she found, Laure kept to herself by day, and carried with her until dark. There was no one in the priory to whom she could have confided her pleasure, for there was none in the Abbey that had her love, or, indeed, any love at all, for the world that God had made for Himself and for mankind. The day-tasks also had their pleasures for the novice. She learned, in time, that she was not obliged to fill her recreation hours with embroidery; but that she might sleep, or pray, or work in the garden, or do whatever a quiet fancy should select. So she chose to befriend the soil, and played with it as if it were a tender companion. And after her exercise here, the rest of the day, nones, vespers, supper, confession, and compline, melted away almost unheeded, leaving her at last to the sweet-breathed night, and to a sleep as dreamless and as sound as that of any baby.

In this most simple way, without any untoward happening, without her once leaving the priory, the days flowed on, spring melted into summer, and Laure found herself possessed of an infinite and ever-increasing content, the great secret of which probably lay in the fact that every waking hour had its occupation. She had entered her new life in the most beautiful time of the year, and, heedless of this, began, in her delusive happiness, to wonder why, long ago, the whole world had not taken to such existence. She had plenty of time to indulge in dreams,—vague and fragile dreams of the great world and the people dwelling therein, that she should never come to know. But the fact that she could never know them did not come home to her with the force of a deprivation. She did not feel herself to be a hopeless prisoner. She was not professed; and the fact that there still remained to her a free choice easily kept her from any over-vivid perception of the eternal dulness of convent life.

Once in two weeks Madame Eleanore came to see her, and if these visits were bitter to the mother, Laure never guessed it. Also, from time to time, the professed nuns would leave the convent for a day or two at a time, on what errands the novices were not told. But Laure knew that similar privileges would be hers after her profession.

The summer, in its fulness and beauty, passed away. Purple autumn came and went. And one day, in the first cold weather, Laure was summoned to the Mother-prioress’ room, where she was told a proud thing. It was that, if she chose profession at the end of her novitiate, which would come in the Christmas season, her consecration might take place at the same time, by special permission from the highest power; for, by ordinary ecclesiastic law, she was still many years too young for this consummation of the celibate life. But if she so chose, his Grace the Bishop of St. Nazaire would perform the ceremony of sanctification on the twenty-sixth of December, directly after the forty-eight-hour vigil of the birth of the Christ.

Laure heard this news with every appearance and every expression of delight; and when she returned to the church for tierce and morning mass, she tried, all through the service, to bring herself face to face with herself, to appreciate, as she was conscious that she must, sooner or later, the intense gravity of her position. But for some reason, by some failure of concentrative force, she could not bring her mind to the point of understanding. Over and over again her thoughts slid around that one fact that she knew she must try to realize,—how, after the giving of her final pledge, there could be no turning back, there could be no escape, while she should live, from this life of prayer. She did not appreciate it at all. She only remembered that she had been very contented here, and that the days were never long.

In the weeks that followed her talk with Mère Piteuse, Laure enacted this same scene of effort with herself many times, always futilely. As a matter of fact, it was too grave a responsibility to put upon the shoulders of a child in years and a less than child in experience. But this unfairness was one of the prerogatives of monasticism, unappreciated to this day.

Christmas time drew near; and gradually Laure dropped her efforts toward understanding and fell into dreams of a varied and complex, if unimportant, nature. She was to be professed alone, on the day after Christmas. No novice had entered the convent within three months of her, and, moreover, her birth and position made it desirable that she should be surrounded by a little extra pomp; for, although Laure did not know it, she was much looked up to by the nuns of humbler birth, and universally regarded as a future prioress of the house. During the last days of her novitiate the young girl was treated with peculiar reverence and consideration, and she was given a good deal of time for solitary reflection and prayer. Every day she was summoned to the cell of the Prioress, who herself gave the girl good counsel and instruction upon the higher life; while so much general attention was paid her that Laure became a little astonished at her own importance.

In the first three weeks of December Madame Eleanore did not come at all to see her daughter, and Laure grew lonely for her. She suspected nothing of her mother’s heart-sickness over the approaching ceremony that was to cut her child off from her forever; and, indeed, had Laure been told of the mother-feeling, she could not have understood it.

On the afternoon of the twenty-third day of December the novice was kneeling in her cell, supposedly at prayer, in reality indulging in a rather forlorn and melancholy reverie. It was the hour of recreation; and the convent was very quiet, for most of the nuns were sleeping, in preparation for the strain of the forty-eight-hour Christmas service. The stillness brought a chill to Laure’s heart, and she was near to tears, when her door was suddenly pushed open, and some one halted there. Laure turned quickly enough to see the white-robed Prioress disappear, closing the door behind a figure that remained motionless inside the threshold.

“My mother!” cried Laure, springing to her feet.

“Laure,” was the quivering response, as Eleanore held out her arms.

The dreamer, suddenly become a little child, went into the mother-clasp, her pristine home, and was half carried over to the only seat in the room,—a wooden tabouret, large enough for only one. Upon this Eleanore seated herself, while Laure sank to the floor beside her, huddling close to the human warmth of her mother, her head lying in that mother’s lap, both hands held tightly in the larger, stronger, older ones.

“Laure—my Laure—my little Laure!” was all that, at this time, madame could force her lips to say. And hearing it, the girl, suddenly overwrought and overswept with repressed yearning for home love, all at once burst into a convulsive flood of tears.

Some moments passed, and the sobs, instead of diminishing, began to increase in violence, till Eleanore became alarmed. Certain unexpressed fears took possession of her. She made no effort to bring them into definite order in her mind. They merely joined themselves to a shadow that had long since come upon her in the form of a question: What, in bare reality, was this vast monster called “the Church”? Why had it a right to step thus between mother and child? How could such a thing be called holy? Filled with this idea, and realizing to the full how desperately short was her chance, Eleanore set herself to work, through every means known to her, to quiet Laure, to stop her tears, and to gain her earnest attention.

Under madame’s determined calm, it was not long before Laure was brought back to self-control. And when she was quiet, the mother, sitting very straight in her place, drew the girl to her feet, and, holding her fast by the hand, while she looked steadily into the clear, brown eyes, she asked, slowly, with an emphasis born of her desperation,—

“Laure, is it indeed in thy heart to remain, of thy free will and desire, forever in this house, forsaking all that was dear to thee of youth and love, and freedom, in thy home, Le Crépuscule?”

Laure, while she looked at her mother, gave a sudden sigh, and her face became staring pale. Eleanore strove to fathom her daughter’s look, but could know nothing of the flood of natural desire and youth that was oversweeping the girl. Laure’s resistance against it was silence. She sat still, cowed and bent, while the noise of the waters filled her ears and her heart was near to bursting with suffocation and yearning. Before this silence, however, these passionate moments gradually ebbed away. The wave retreated, and her heart shut tight. Words and phrases from Holy Scriptures, books of prayer, and St. Benedict’s Rule, came crowding to her, and she considered to herself how she might show her mother the sin of her suggestion. But, as she had kept silence one way, so now she practised it in the other. After the long pause her voice found itself in three words only,—

“My mother!—madame!”

Eleanore’s eyes fell. Her hope was gone. For the thousandth time her religion rose to shame her, before her child, for the absorbing love of her motherhood. Presently Laure, standing before her, more like her judge than like the disconsolate creature she had so lately comforted, spoke again,—

“Madame, here in this place have I found contentment. There is no sorrow and no desire when one lives but to pray and sleep, and wake and pray again. God lives here continually in our hearts and He begets in us the love that we bear for each other. Moreover, after my profession and consecration, much freedom will be added to my life. I shall have no more long hours of instruction, nor shall I be called on to do the bidding of any one save perhaps that of the Reverend Mother. And whereas thou ridest hither to me each fortnight, I, after my vow, may go instead to thee, to see thee and mine ancient home.—Nay, mother, forgive me that I rebuke thy words; but thou must not urge me thus, for my spirit is not as yet very strong or very much tried, and is like to break under temptation.”

Dry-eyed and straight-lipped, Eleanore rose from her place and kissed her daughter, saying,—

“This is farewell, dear child, till thou shalt come home to me for the first time after thy wedding with Heaven. My humble and earthly blessing be upon thee,—and mayst thou find thy spirit strong, my Laure, when thou shalt have need of it; as, in God’s time, thou surely wilt.”

Once again the mother kissed her girl—kissed her in final renunciation. Laure felt a burning upon her brow long after madame had left the room. Eleanore’s last words also somewhat affected the novice,—brought her a dim sense of uneasiness and foreboding. But it was in silence that she saw the black-robed figure leave the cell, and in silence she remained for a long time after she was left alone, thinking over what had passed.

Laure had acted in such perfect sincerity that the wound she inflicted on her mother, and the mortification she put upon her, were neither of them realized. It was not wonderful that the impulses of the girl’s heart had been stilled by the unceasing precept of the past months. Her years were naturally powerless to fathom her mother’s heart, the heart of her who sees herself completely separated in every interest from the one that has always been nearest and dearest. And so the argument that she conducted within herself after her mother’s going was not one of justification of her own act, but—oh, ye gods!—an attempted justification of Eleanore’s impiety.

Laure passed the next two days in an odor of extreme sanctity, and hailed with deep inward joy the beginning of the long vigil of the birth of the Saviour, on Christmas Eve. She was excused from keeping steadily in church through this protracted service, for the reason that she would be obliged, according to the Rule, to spend the night after her consecration alone in the church, at prayer. Throughout Christmas Day Laure was in a state of repressed nervous excitement. Was not to-morrow to be her wedding-day? Was she not to become what the first Magdalen had never been,—the bride of Christ? Her prayers throughout this day were mingled with thoughts of the highest purity, the most refined spiritual ecstasy, the most shining, uplifted innocence. Tears of joy and of proud humility flowed readily from her eyes, while her mouth was filled with heavenly praises that welled up from her heart.

In the afternoon she was sent away to rest; for the Mother-prioress was considerate of her strength. Laure did not, however, lie down. Instead, she stood for more than an hour at the window of her cell, looking out over the world, and watching the fine feathery snowflakes float down through the clear blue air. The earth was wrapped in a mantle whiter than her consecration robe and veil. Perhaps it was a shroud. Laure shivered at the thought, while she contemplated the unutterable stillness of all things. Not a sound disturbed this vast scene of death. The tree-boughs bent low under the weight of their pure burden; and when the early evening fell, and vespers chimed out over the valley, the tiny, frozen tears of Heaven still floated through the dark with ever-increasing softness.

It was seven o’clock when Sœur Celeste, the chaplain, came to summon the bride-elect to confession and interrogation with Monseigneur the Bishop of St. Nazaire. As the two women passed together down the long corridor of novices, through the cold cloister and empty refectory and along the passage leading to the chapter, Laure’s heart was struck with a chill of fear. How terribly empty the convent was! No one in the refectory, the corridors scarcely lighted, the whole convent utterly silent; for the drone of prayers in the church was inaudible here. She wondered how the terrible vigil progressed, how many nuns had fainted in their fatigue. She thought of anything but the matter before her, and was still unprepared when the chaplain left her alone at the door of the chapter.

The Bishop of St. Nazaire was alone in this room, and at Laure’s appearance he rose and went to her, taking her by the hand, and not amazed to find her icy cold.

“My daughter!” he said gently; and Laure, looking into his face, was suddenly filled with an ineffable comfort.

She had known the Bishop all her life, for he was her mother’s close friend and a constant visitor at Le Crépuscule. But never before had she seen him in this fulness of his office, so replete with magnetic spirituality. If the unswervingly narrow tenets of his creed made St. Nazaire too arbitrary where his religion was concerned, and if the geniality of his own nature had, at times, brought upon him in his own home reactions that afterwards rendered necessary the severest penances, at least these two extremes of his life had brought him to a remarkable intermediate balance. Irrespective of his state, he could be defined as a man of the world, of large sympathies, having a broad understanding of human frailty, because of the unconquerable weaknesses of his own nature. His ethical code was one of high severity and strict purity; and he strove with all the power of his spirit to follow it himself, never failing, the while, to excuse the eternal failures of others. And now, as Laure looked up into his large, smooth-shaven face, framed in long fair hair, and lighted by a pair of bright blue eyes that generally regarded the world with a surprising air of trustful innocence, the young novice lost all her sense of desolation, and felt herself suddenly introduced into a secure and unhoped-for haven.

St. Nazaire himself, examining the young girl’s face, and searching her soul therein, knew that at this moment he was nearer to the inmost being of the daughter of Le Crépuscule than he should ever be again; and he felt that no one ever yet had been in a position to probe the depths of her nature as he was going to probe them now. She gave herself up to him as completely as Eleanore had given her once long ago, when, as a new-born infant, she had wailed in his arms at her baptism before the altar in the chapel of the Twilight Castle.

With this strong feeling of mutual confidence, Laure and the Bishop seated themselves in the chapter of the convent. Confession and stereotyped interrogation were gone through with dutifully, and then followed what Laure had begun to wish for at the first moment of their meeting,—a long and intimate talk upon the life that she should lead as a professed nun. It was a life with which St. Nazaire was as fully conversant as a man could ever be, and he pictured it to Laure as faithfully as he was accustomed to picture Heaven—a heaven of flying men and women carrying in their hands small golden harps—to those that received the last sacrament at his hands. Laure had a vision of long years filled ever fuller of transcendent joy and peace, in which she should never know a wish that her life could not fill, nor a desire beyond more earnest prayers, or a fast a little longer and more rigorous than heretofore. And so skilful was the Bishop in the manipulation of his sombre material, that he got from it remarkable beauties which, impossible as it seems, were as convincing to him as to Laure.

It was late in the evening when the young girl received the episcopal blessing and retired through the still nunnery to her cell. But her mind was at perfect rest that night; and she went to sleep to dream of nothing but the happiness and beauty of a consecrated life.

At ten o’clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth day of December, the whole convent assembled in church for high mass, which was to be celebrated by the Bishop of St. Nazaire. To-day the novices were separated from the professed nuns, and the two companies knelt on opposite sides of the church, leaving a broad space between them. The choir was in its place. In the lower choir-stalls sat the Mother-prioress, the sub-prioress, the chaplain and the deacons; while his Grace was in the great chair of honor used by none but him. The only member of the nunnery not present was Laure, who made her appearance just as the bell began to ring for the opening of the mass. She came in from the chapter-house at the far end of the church, and moved slowly up the aisle. Her white robe and full mantle hid her figure and trailed around her on the floor, and her head was crowned with the bridal veil, which covered her face and fell to the ground all around her. In one hand she carried a parchment scroll on which her vow was inscribed; and in the other hand she bore the wedding ring.

As she advanced toward the altar every head was turned toward her, and it was seen that she was white as death. But she was also very calm. Indeed she was acting quite mechanically, like one under a hypnotic spell; and there was no expression whatever on her face as she made her genuflection to the cross, and then turned aside and knelt among the company of novices. She took her usual part in the mass that followed, making no slip in the service, and joining as usual in the singing, with her full contralto voice.

When the benediction had been pronounced from the chancel, there was a pause. No one in the church moved from her knees, and the Bishop remained before the company with his right hand uplifted. Laure raised her eyes, and her body trembled slightly, for her heart was palpitating like running water. When the silence had lasted a seemingly unbearable while, St. Nazaire turned his face to Laure, who rose and went up to him, kneeling again in the chancel. And now, as she spoke, her quiet, impressive voice was heard by every nun in the church,—

“Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam. Et non confundas me in expectatione mea.”

As she finished, Laure’s throat contracted, and she gasped convulsively. Her head swam in a mist, but she knew that the Bishop was questioning her from the catechism,—knew that she was answering him; and then, afterwards, she heard, as from a great distance, the voice of the Bishop praying. At the Amen, St. Nazaire signed to her again, and she rose and stepped forward to his side. Then, turning till she faced the church, she said quite distinctly, though in a low tone,—

“I, Sister Angelique, promise steadfastness, virginity, continuance in virtue, and obedience before God and all His saints, in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict, in this Priory of Holy Madeleine, in the presence of the Reverend Father Charles, Lord Bishop of St. Nazaire, of the Duchy of Brittany, Lord under the most Christian Duke, Jean de Montfort.”

Thereafter she went up to the altar, and there signed her scroll with her new name and the sign of the cross. And there the ring of Heaven was placed upon her finger, and she was declared a bride. For the last time she knelt before the father, who lifted up his hands and consecrated her, after the ancient formula, to the love of her Saviour, the blessing of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. And then Laure, a professed nun, came down from the holy place, and was received among her sisters and reverently saluted by them.

The ceremony over, all the convent adjourned to the refectory, where a little feast of rejoicing was held in honor of the newly consecrated one. And after this, at an early hour of the afternoon, Laure was conducted to her cell, and her ten days of retirement began. All that afternoon, overcome with the strain of the past few days, the young girl slept. She woke only when the Sœur Eloise, a stout and stupid little nun, but a few weeks since made a lay sister, came up to her with bread and milk. When she had eaten and was alone again, she sat for a long time in her dark cell, looking out upon the starry night, and wondering vaguely over her long future. Presently the bell for the end of confession rang out, and, knowing that it was time, she rose and went through the convent, and into the vast church. The last of the nuns had left it and gone to seek her rest. Only the sub-prioress remained, waiting for Laure. Seeing her come, the older nun saluted her silently, and then moved away toward the dimly lighted chapter. In the doorway of this room she turned to look back at the white figure standing in the dimly lighted, incense-reeking aisle; and then, with a faint sigh of memory, she extinguished all the chapter lights, bowed to the little crucifix hanging in that room, and went her way to bed.

Laure was left alone in the great, dusky House of God. Where she knelt, before the shrine of St. Joseph, two candles burned. All around her was darkness—silence—solitude. Awed and wide-eyed, she forced herself to kneel upon the stones, and her mind vaguely sought a prayer. But thoughts of Heaven refused to come. Her Bridegroom was very far away. She felt a cold weight settling slowly down upon her heart, and she trembled, and her brows grew damp with chilly dew. Many thoughts came and went. She remembered afterwards to have had a very distinct vision of Alixe, standing alone upon a great cliff a mile from Le Crépuscule, with a wild sea-wind blowing her hair and her mantle, and white gulls veering about her head. For an instant, a wild longing flamed up through her soul. Setting her lips, she tried to force her mind back again to God. One—two—three faltering, reverent words were uttered by her. Then Laure du Crépuscule started wildly to her feet.

“God! Oh, God! I am imprisoned! I am captive! I am captive forever! God! Oh, God!”

As these wild cries echoed through the vaulted roof, she threw herself passionately to the floor and lay there helpless, while the wave of merciless realization swept over her. Then her hands wandered along the stones of the floor, and her cheek followed them, and she clutched at the cold, damp granite, in a vain, vague search for her mother’s breast.

CHAPTER THREE
FLAMMECŒUR

The New Year had come: a time of highest festival in Brittany, when the land was alive with merriment and gifts and legends and grewsome tales. It was St. Sylvester’s Eve, when, as all men knew, the waves of the Atlantic for once defied their barriers and struggled up the towering cliffs, eager to meet, halfway, the descending dolmens, permitted once in the year to leave unguarded the deep earth-treasures, that they might quench their furious thirst in the sea. And on that night half the peasants of Brittany lay awake, speculating on the vast wealth that might be theirs if they were but to arise and seek out some monster dolmen and wait beside it till the immense rock rolled away from its hole, leaving a pit of gold and gems open to the clutching hands of the world-man. But fear of the demoniac return of these same rolling rocks kept most of the dreamers safe within their beds during the fateful midnight hour, though of the luck of the few daring ones, there were, nay, still are, many veracious tales.

Le Crépuscule, no less than the surrounding countryside, participated in the interest of these supernatural matters; but the old Chateau had real affairs of feast and frolic to occupy it also. The great New Year’s dinner was the most lavish that the Castle gave in the twelve-month, and this year, in spite of its depleted household, there was no exception made to the general rule. The great tables were set in the central hall and loaded with every sort of food and drink, while kitchen fires roared about their juicy meats, and in the chimney-piece of the hall an ox was roasted whole before the flames. Ordinarily the dinner hour at the Castle was half-past eleven in the morning; but on feast days it was changed to four in the afternoon, and the merriment was then kept up till the last woman had retired, and the last man found a pillow on the rushes that strewed the floor.

On this New Year’s eve there were, as usual, two great tables set; for to-night not only all the retainers of the Castle, but also half a hundred of the tenantry from the estates, claimed the privilege of their fealty and came to eat at the house of their lord, sitting below his salt, breaking his bread, supping his beer, and talking and laughing and drinking each till he could no more.

Madame Eleanore was always present at this feast, as a matter of duty and of graciousness. She sat to-night at the head of the board, with an empty place beside her for Gerault. Alixe was upon her right hand, and one of the young squires-at-arms upon her left; and in the general hubbub of the feast none of the peasant boors noticed how persistent a silence reigned at that end of the table, nor how wearily sad was the expression of their lady’s face.

This was the first feast in many years at which the Bishop of St. Nazaire had not been present; but he had not come to Le Crépuscule since Laure’s consecration, and madame had given up hoping for his arrival. Darkness had fallen some time since, and the hour was growing late. This could be told from the increased noise at the table. Puddings and crumcakes had been finished, and the men of the company were turning their attention exclusively to the liquor—beer and wine—which had been brought up to the hall in great casks, from which each might help himself. David le petit, the jester, ran up and down on the table, waving a black wand and shouting verses at the company. There was a universal clamor and howling of laughter and song, which madame heard with ever-increasing weariness and displeasure, though the demoiselles showed no such signs of fatigue.

Suddenly, through the tumult, madame caught a sound that made her lift her head and half rise from her chair, listening intently. There had been a sound of horses’ hoofs on the courtyard stones.

“’Tis St. Nazaire at last,” she whispered to Alixe. “Now we shall hear of—Go thou thyself, Alixe, and fetch hither fresh meat and a pasty and a flagon of the best wine. Monseigneur must be weary. He shall sit here at my side—”

Alixe rose obediently and hurried away on her errand; and while she was gone there came a clamor at the door. A burly henchman sprang up and lurched forward to open it, peering out into the darkness. Those in the room heard a little ejaculation, and then there entered a new-comer with some one else beside him. Neither was the Bishop of St. Nazaire. Both of them were young,—one, indeed, no more than a boy, wearing an esquire’s jerkin, hosen, cap, and mantle, and carrying only a short dirk in his belt. The other, who came forward into the full light of the lamps and torches, was a young man of six and twenty or thereabouts, lean and tall and graceful, clad in half armor, but clean-shaved, like a woman. His face had the look of the South in it, his eyes were piercingly dark, and his waving hair as black as the night. In their first glance at the new-comer, most in the room took notice that his spurs were not gilt; but soon a maid spied out that the little squire carried on his back a lute, strung on a ribbon, and then the stranger’s profession was plain.

This general examination lasted but the matter of a few seconds. Then Madame Eleanore rose, and the stranger saluted her with a grace that became him well, and began to speak in a mellow voice,—

“Madame la Châtelaine, give thee God’s greeting! I hight Bertrand Flammecœur, singer of Provence, the land of the trouvère; and now find myself a most weary traveller through this chilly land. Here—” indicating his follower with two slim fingers—“is my squire, Yvain. We come to-day from the Castle of Laval, in the South, where, in the high hospitality of its lord, we have sojourned for some weeks. There, indeed, I sang in half a score of tenzons with one Le Fleurie, an able singer. But now, to-night, inasmuch as we are weary with long riding, empty for food, numb with cold, and have found the drawbridge of this Castle down, we make bold to crave shelter for the night, and a manchet of bread to comfort our stomachs withal,” and the trouvère bent his body in a graceful obeisance; while Eleanore, smiling her hospitality, stepped forward a little from where she stood.

“It is the Breton custom, Sir Trouvère, to leave the drawbridge down during the holy weeks of Christmas and Easter; and in those days any may obtain food and shelter among us. Thou and thy squire, however, are doubly welcome, coming as ye do from our cousins of Laval, in which house I, Eleanore du Crépuscule, was born. In the name of my son, the Seigneur Gerault, I return you God’s greeting, and pray you to make this Chateau your home. Now, sith ye are well weary and anhungered, let your boy rest him there among my squires, while you come here and sit and eat.”

Thereupon little Yvain, after a bow, ran eagerly to the place indicated to him; and Flammecœur, smiling, went forward at madame’s invitation toward the place at her side. Ere he reached it, Alixe, who had been in the kitchens and thus missed the stranger’s entrance, came into the hall, bearing with her a wooden tray containing food and red wine. At sight of the stranger she halted suddenly, and as suddenly he paused to make her reverence; for by her dress he knew her to be no serving-wench. In the instant that their glances met, her green and brilliant eyes flashed a flame of fire into his dark ones; and curiously enough, a color rose in the pale cheeks of the man ere Alixe had thought to catch the flush of maiden modesty. Perhaps no one in the room had noted the contretemps. At any rate, Flammecœur, taking a quick glance to see, found none looking at him in more than ordinary curiosity; whereupon his debonair self-possession flew back to him, and, turning again to Madame Eleanore, he presently sat down to table and began his meal. While he ate, and his appetite was excellent, he found space to converse with every one about him; and had a smile for all, from madame to the shyest of the demoiselles. Out of courtesy for their hospitality, he gave a somewhat careless and rambling but nevertheless highly entertaining account of some of his wanderings, and was amused to see how the young demoiselles hung on his words. Only upon Alixe did he waste his efforts, for she paid scant attention to him, listening just enough to escape the charge of rudeness. And Flammecœur was man enough and vain enough to get himself into something of a pique about her in this first hour of his coming to Le Crépuscule.

When the stranger had had his say, and proved himself sufficiently “trouvère,” the general after-feast of song and story began. Both tale and song were of that day,—broad enough for modern ears, but of their time unusually mild, and of the character that was to be heard from ladies’ lips. Burliest henchman and slenderest squire alike tuned his verse for the ears of Madame Eleanore to hear; and the wanderer, Flammecœur, noted this fact astutely, and so much approved of it that, while dwarf David’s fairy tale went on, he took a quick resolve that he would make a temporary home for himself in this Castle.

In the course of time Flammecœur was asked for a song. Yvain brought his lute to him, and he tuned the instrument while he pleaded excuse from a long chanson. When he began, however, his voice showed small sign of fatigue. He sang a low, swinging melody of his own composing, fitted to words once used in a Court of Love in the south,—a delicate bit of versification dealing with dreams. And so delicately did he perform his task that perfect silence followed its close.

A moment later there was a sharp round of applause; for these Bretons had never heard such a chansonette in all their cold-country lives. Before anything more could be demanded, Flammecœur, satisfied with the impression already made, sprang to his feet, and turned to Eleanore, saying: “Lady, I crave permission for me and my squire to seek our rest. We have ridden many leagues to-day, and at early dawn must be up and off again.”

Eleanore rose and gave him her hand to kiss. “Sieur Flammecœur, we render thee thanks for our pleasure, and give ye God’s sleep. Hither, Foulque! Light the Sieur Trouvère and his boy to thy room, and sleep thou this night with Robert Meloc.”

The young squire bowed and fetched a torch from the wall. Yvain came running to his master’s side; and presently, to the deep regret of all the demoiselles, the three disappeared into the “long room,” from which a hallway led to the squires’ rooms.

In spite of Bertrand’s words about his early departure on the following morning, he and Yvain did not go that day. Neither did they depart on the next, nor within that week. On the morning after his arrival the minstrel confessed, readily enough, though with seeming reluctance, that he had no particular objective point in his journeying; that he but travelled for adventure, for love of his lady, and that it was his mind to linger around St. Nazaire or the coast till spring should give an opening into Normandy. Madame Eleanore would not hear of it that he should seek lodgings in St. Nazaire. There was strong tradition of hospitality in Le Crépuscule,—ordinarily a lonely place enough; and its châtelaine eagerly besought the Flaming-heart to lodge with her till spring—and longer if he would. And after that she put him, forsooth, into the Bishop’s chamber on the ground-floor, gave Yvain an adjoining closet, and would take no refusal that he go hawking in the early afternoon with all the young squires of the Castle.

Bertrand took to his life at the Twilight Castle with a grace, an ease, and, withal, a tact that won him every heart within the first three days of his residence there. He was a man of the broad world, such an one as these simple Breton folk had not known before; for Seigneur Gerault did not travel like this fellow, and had none of his manner for setting forth tales. The young squires, the men-at-arms, the henchmen, the very cooks and scullions, listened open-mouthed and open-eyed at the stories he told of adventure and love, of distant countries, of kings and courts and mighty wars. Besides this, he could manage a horse or a sword like any warrior knight; he was deep learned in falconry; he could track a hare or a fox through the most impossible furze; and he could read like a monk and write like a scribe. As for his accomplishments with the other sex, they were too many to mention. Before evening of the second day every woman in the Castle from Madame Eleanore down, save, for some mysterious reason, Alixe, was at his feet, confessing her utter subjection. His soft Southern speech, the exquisite Langue d’Oc, used in Brittany as French was used in England; his clean, dark, fine-featured face; his glowing eyes; his love-laden manner, that ever dared and never presumed; finally, what, in all ages, has seemed to prove most attractive to women in men, a suggestion of past libertinism,—all these things combined to make him utterly irresistible to the feminine heart.

Such a life of never-ending adulation, of universal admiration, was a paradise to the troubadour, in whom inordinate vanity was the strongest and most carefully concealed characteristic. So long as he should be the centre of interest, he was never bored. But when he was not the central object, there were just two people in all the Castle that did not bore him unendurably. One of these was Madame Eleanore, in liking whom he betrayed exceptional taste; the other was Alixe, who had piqued him into attention. His admiration for madame was not wholly unnatural; for Bertrand Flammecœur, love-child as he was, and filled with unholy passions, was, nevertheless, as his singing showed, a man of refinement and gentle blood. His feeling for Alixe was keen, because it was unsatisfactory. She was at no pains to conceal her dislike for him, and it was her greatest pleasure to whip a pretty speech of his to rags with irony. He plied her with every art he knew, tried every mood upon her, and to Alixe’s glory be it said, she never betrayed, by look or word, that she had anything for him more than, at best, contemptuous indifference. And after a week of effort the minstrel was obliged to confess to himself that never before, in all his adventures, had he met with so complete a rebuff from any woman.

He did not, even then, entirely relax his efforts. One morning, ten days after his arrival, he was passing the chapel, a small octagonal room opening off the great hall just beside the stairs, when he perceived Alixe within. She was alone; and as he turned into the doorway she was just rising from her knees. Unconscious of his presence, she remained standing before the altar looking upon the crucifix, her hands fervently clasped before her. After watching her for a moment in silence, Flammecœur began to move noiselessly across the little room, and was at her very shoulder before he said softly,—

“A fair good morn to thee, my demoiselle.”

Alixe wheeled about. “A prayerful one to thee, Sir Minstrel!” she said sharply, and would have left him but that, smiling, he held her back.

“Nay, ma mie, nay, be pleased to remain for a moment’s love-look.” Alixe merely shrugged at his teasing mockery, whereupon he became serious. “Listen, mademoiselle, and explain this matter to me. Is all this Castle under a vow of unceasing prayer? Piety beseems a damsel well enow; yet never have I seen a household so devout. Madame Châtelaine repeats her prayers five times a day; and the step before the altar here is ever weighted by some ardent maid or squire. Ohé! Love in the south; prayer in the north. Rose of Langue d’Oc,—snows of Langue d’Oïl. Tell me, Dame Alixe, which likes thy heart the most, customs of my land or of thine?”

“This is all the land I know. And as for thee—well, if thou’rt a true man of the south, methinks I would remain here,” she retorted discourteously, giving him eye for eye.

“I do not my country so much despite to say its men are all like me,” returned the Flame-hearted, smoothly, in an inward rage. “Yet I could tell thee tales of thy cold Normandy that are not all of ice. Methinks this cheerless Breton coast is the mother of melancholy; for shine the sun never so brightly, it cannot melt the soul that hath been frozen under its past winter’s sky. But, Demoiselle Alixe,”—Flammecœur dropped his anger, and took on a sudden tone of exceeding interest,—“Demoiselle Alixe, I hold in my heart a great curiosity concerning thee. I see thee here living as a daughter of the house; yet art thou called Rieuse. Now, wast thou born in Crépuscule?”

Alixe regarded him with half-closed eyes. Never had she resented anything in him half so much as this question. Yet she replied to him in a tone as smooth as his own: “Yea, truly I am of Le Crépuscule, by heart and love. But I am not of the Twilight blood. I was born on the Castle lands. I am the foster-sister of the Demoiselle Laure.”

“Laure?”

“Sooth, hast thou not heard of Laure, the daughter of madame?”

“Nay. Is she dead, this maid?”

“She is a nun.”

“Ah! ’Tis the same.”

“Not for us here. Thou must know she is but newly consecrated; and she is to be permitted to come home, here, to the Castle, once in a fortnight, to see madame her mother. On the morrow she will come for the first time since her novitiate began, nine months agone.”

“Sang Dieu! Now know I why the Castle breathes with prayer. Madame would make all things holy enough to receive her. She cannot be old, this Laure, sith she is thy foster-sister?”

“I am older than she. Also, an I remain longer from the tapestry, I shall be caused to make you do half my daily task as a punishment for keeping me tardy. Give ye God-den, fair sir, and pleasant prayers!” And with a flutter and an unholy laugh, Alixe had whirled past him and was gone out of the chapel.

Flammecœur looked after her, but for the first time felt no inclination for pursuit. Perhaps this was because, for the first time, Alixe had given him something besides herself to think about. This daughter of Madame Eleanore and her peculiar vocation interested him extremely. It was quite surprising to find how interested one could become in little matters, after a few days in Le Crépuscule. So Flammecœur presently marched off to the armory in search of Yvain, and, finding him, he questioned the little squire minutely as to the gossip of the keep concerning the Demoiselle Laure. Was she mis-shapen? This was the only excuse for entering a nunnery that occurred to the Flame-hearted. Yvain had not heard that she was deformed. Was she crossed in love? Mayhap; but Yvain had not heard it. Flammecœur shrugged his shoulders. The enigma was not solved. It mattered little enough, anyway. Alixe had jilted him again. Heigho! He ordered his horse, and went to seek a falcon. While in the falcon-house he remembered that this nun was coming to the Castle on the morrow, and he decided that he would have a sight of her when she arrived.

Not unnaturally Bertrand Flammecœur had taken on the state of mind of the whole Castle. Mademoiselle was coming home on the morrow. Every one knew it, for a message had arrived on the previous day from Monseigneur the Bishop of St. Nazaire, and Le Crépuscule was in a state of unwonted excitement. The word came to madame as less of a surprise than as an overwhelming relief, and a joy that had some bitterness in it. It had rested with St. Nazaire whether her child should come home to see her twice in the month! Ah, well, she was coming; she would lie in her mother’s arms; the Castle would echo again to the music of her voice! Thus through the whole day madame sat dreaming of the morrow, nor noticed the tardy arrival of Alixe in the spinning-room, nor how, all morning, Isabelle and Viviane whispered and smiled and idled over their tasks.

Now, if Madame Eleanore’s heart and brain were full to overflowing with the dreams of Laure, how feverish with longing came the thought of home, home though for one little hour, to the prisoner herself! On the night before her going, as, indeed, on many nights of late, Laure could not sleep. Her eyes stared wide open into the night, while her mind traced outlines of Le Crépuscule in the soft darkness. Ah! the dearly loved halls and their blessed company, all that she had not seen for nearly nine months, and on the morrow should see again! Her brain burned with impatience. She tossed and tumbled on her hard and narrow bed. Finally, long ere the hour for matins, she rose and went to sit at the window of her cell, looking out upon the clear and frosty winter’s night. How the hours passed till prime she scarcely knew. But at a quarter to five, when matins were over, she went down into the church for first service, wearing short riding-shoes under her white robe, with her hair bound tight beneath her coif and veil, for galloping. During the simple prayer-service, she got twenty penitential Aves for inattention, and read added reproof in the eyes of Mère Piteuse. At length, however, it came to be the hour for the breaking of the fast, and Laure found opportunity to speak to the Sœur Eloise, who was to follow her as attendant and protectress on the road to Crépuscule. Stupid, stolid, faithful, low of birth and therefore much in awe of Laure, was this little nun; and had the Mother-prioress been worldly wise, it had not been she that followed Laure into the world this bright and bitter January morning.

At a quarter to eight o’clock the two young women mounted their palfreys at the convent gate, and were off into the snow-filled forest, while behind them echoed gentle admonitions to unceasing prayer. Feeling a saddle under her once again, and a strong white horse bearing her along over a well-beaten road, Laure drew a breath that seemed to have no end. And as her lungs filled with God’s free air, she pressed one hand to her throat to ease the terrible ache of rising tears. How long it was since she had felt free to move her limbs! How long since she had traversed this shaded road! Eloise did not trouble her. The lay sister was too occupied in clinging to the mane of her horse to venture speech; and she looked at her high-born companion with mingled awe and admiration as she saw her urge her beast into a trot. The convent animal had an easy gait, and appeared to possess possibilities in the way of speed. Laure touched him a little with her spur. The creature responded well. A moment later Eloise turned pale with fright to see her lady strike the spur home in earnest, and go flying wildly down the road till she was presently lost among the thick snow-laden trees.

Laure was happy now. She found herself not much encumbered with her dress, which had been “modified” in obedience to the law for conduct outside the convent. Her gown and mantle were of the usual cut, and she was girdled by her rosary; but her head was covered with a close-fitting black hood from which fell a short white veil, two edges of which were pinned beneath her chin, giving her, though she did not know it, a delightfully softened expression. After she had left Eloise behind, she continued to increase the speed of her animal till she had all but lost control of him. Fifteen minutes later she was out of the forest and running along a heavily packed road, bordered on either side with a thin line of trees, beyond which stretched broad fields and moorlands, among which, somewhere, the priory estate ended and that of Le Crépuscule began. Eloise was now a mile behind; but Laure had no thought for her. Her breath was coming short no less with emotion than with the exercise; for the image of her mother was before her eyes. She let her mind search where it would, through sweet and yearning depths; and her heart was filled with thanksgiving for this hour of freedom. She was nearing that place where the Rennes highway joined that of St. Nazaire, both of them uniting at the Castle road, which led to the Chateau by a long and winding ascent. Presently the Chateau became visible; and Laure, looking on it with all her soul in her eyes, took no heed of the slow-moving horseman ahead of her, on whom she was rapidly gaining. Indeed, neither was aware of the presence of the other, till Laure’s horse, scenting company, made a short dash of a hundred yards, and then came into a sudden walk beside the animal bestrode by Bertrand Flammecœur of Provence. The suddenness of the horse’s stop caused Laure to jerk heavily forward. Flammecœur leaned over and caught her bridle. At that moment their eyes met.

A flush of vivid pink overspread Laure’s lily face. She shrank quickly away from the look in Flammecœur’s eyes. Then her hand went up to her dishevelled hair; and she tried confusedly to straighten it back.

“Take not such pains, reverend lady. By the glory of the saints, thou couldst not make thyself as lovely as God’s world hath made thee!—Prithee, heed me not!”

Laure gave a little gasp at the man’s daring; yet such was Flammecœur’s manner that she did not find herself offended. Presently she had the impulse to give him a sideways glance; and then, all untutored as she was, she read the lively admiration that was written in his face. After that her hands came down from her head, and she took up her bridle again, by the act causing him to relinquish it. “The Sœur Eloise is behind me. I fear that I did much outdistance her,” she said, with a demureness through which a smile was very near to breaking.

Flammecœur looked at her with a peculiar pleasure, a pleasure that he had not often experienced. His immediate impulse was to put a still greater distance between them and Eloise; but prudence came happily to his aid. “Let us stop here till thine attendant comes, while thy horse breathes,” he said, bringing his animal to a gentle halt.

Laure acquiesced at once, and did not analyze her little momentary qualm as one of disappointment. Nevertheless, her face grew white again, and she said not a word through the ten minutes they had to wait till Eloise came riding heavily out of the wood. The other nun looked infinitely startled at the sight of Flammecœur, and was muttering a prayer while she stared from Laure to the trouvère. As soon, however, as she came, the others reined their horses about, and immediately, in the most remarkable silence that the Provençal had ever experienced, proceeded up the hill and into the Castle courtyard.

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.

The whole Castle had assembled to say
God-speed to their departing lord.—Page [25]

“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.”