The Line of Love; Dizain des Mariages, James Branch Cabell [most important books of all time txt] 📗

"Ay," she returned; "that is the moral of my tale. Make me a song of it to-night, dear Will,—and tomorrow, perhaps, you may learn how this woman, too, entered into the Castle of Content."

"Madonna—!" I cried.

"It is late," said she, "and I must go."

"To-morrow—?" I said. My heart was racing now.

"Ay, to-morrow,—the morrow that by this draws very near. Farewell!" She was gone, casting one swift glance backward, even as the ancient Parthians are fabled to have shot their arrows as they fled; and, if the airier missile, also, left a wound, I, for one, would not willingly have quitted her invulnerate.

3. Night, and a Stormed Castle

I went forth into the woods that stand thick about Tiverton Manor, where I lay flat on my back among the fallen leaves, dreaming many dreams to myself,—dreams that were frolic songs of happiness, to which the papers in my jerkin rustled a reassuring chorus.

I have heard that night is own sister to death; now, as the ultimate torn cloud passed seaward, and the new-washed harvest-moon broke forth in a red glory, and stars clustered about her like a swarm of golden bees, I thought this night was rather the parent of a new life. But, indeed, there is a solemnity in night beyond all jesting: for night knits up the tangled yarn of our day's doings into a pattern either good or ill; it renews the vigor of the living, and with the lapsing of the tide it draws the dying toward night's impenetrable depths, gently; and it honors the secrecy of lovers as zealously as that of rogues. In the morning our bodies rise to their allotted work; but our wits have had their season in the night, or of kissing, or of junketing, or of high resolve; and the greater part of such noble deeds as day witnesses have been planned in the solitude of night. It is the sage counsellor, the potent physician that heals and comforts the sorrows of all the world: and night proved such to me, as I pondered on the proud race of Allonby, and knew that in the general record of time my name must soon be set as a sonorous word significant, as the cat might jump, for much good or for large evil.

And Adeliza loved me, and had bidden me be bold! I may not write of what my thoughts were as I considered that stupendous miracle.

But even the lark that daily soars into the naked presence of the sun must seek his woven nest among the grass at twilight; and so, with many yawns, I rose after an hour of dreams to look for sleep. Tiverton Manor was a formless blot on the mild radiance of the heavens, but I must needs pause for a while, gazing up at the Lady Adeliza's window, like a hen drinking water, and thinking of divers matters.

It was then that something rustled among the leaves, and, turning, I stared into the countenance of Stephen Allonby, until to-day Marquis of Falmouth, a slim, comely youth, and son to my father's younger brother.

"Fool," said he, "you walk late."

"Faith!" said I, "instinct warned me that a fool might find fit company here,—dear cousin." He frowned at the word, for he was never prone to admit the relationship, being in disposition somewhat precise.

"Eh?" said he; then paused for a while. "I have more kinsmen than I knew of," he resumed, at length, "and to-day spawns them thick as herrings. Your greeting falls strangely pat with that of a brother of yours, alleged to be begot in lawful matrimony, who hath appeared to claim the title and estates, and hath even imposed upon the credulity of Monsieur de Puysange."

I said, "And who is this new kinsman?" though his speaking had brought my heart into my mouth. "I have many brethren, if report speak truly as to how little my poor father slept at night."

"I do not know," said he. "The vicomte had not told me more than half the tale when I called him a double-faced old rogue. Thereafter we parted—well, rather hastily!"

I was moved with a sort of pity, since it was plainer than a pike-staff that Monsieur de Puysange had bundled this penniless young fellow out of Tiverton, with scant courtesy and a scantier explanation. Still, the wording of this sympathy was a ticklish business. I waved my hand upward. "The match, then, is broken off, between you and the Lady Adeliza?"

"Ay!" my cousin said, grimly.

Again I was nonplussed. Since their betrothal was an affair of rank conveniency, my Cousin Stephen should, in reason, grieve at this miscarriage temperately, and yet if by some awkward chance he, too, adored the delicate comeliness asleep above us, equity conceded his taste to be unfortunate rather than remarkable. Inwardly I resolved to bestow upon my Cousin Stephen a competence, and to pick out for him somewhere a wife better suited to his station. Meanwhile a silence fell.

He cleared his throat; swore softly to himself; took a brief turn on the grass; and approached me, purse in hand. "It is time you were abed," said my cousin.

I assented to this. "And since one may sleep anywhere," I reasoned, "why not here?" Thereupon, for I was somewhat puzzled at his bearing, I lay down upon the gravel and snored.

"Fool," he said. I opened one eye. "I have business here"—I opened the other—"with the Lady Adeliza." He tossed me a coin as I sprang to my feet.

"Sir—!" I cried out.

"Ho, she expects me."

"In that case—" said I.

"The difficulty is to give a signal."

"'Tis as easy as lying," I reassured him; and thereupon I began to sing.

Sang I:

  _"Such toll we took of his niggling hours
  That the troops of Time were sent
  To seise the treasures and fell the towers
  Of the Castle of Content.

  "Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,
  With flaming tower and tumbling battlement
  Where Time hath conquered, and the firelight streams
  Above sore-wounded Loves and dying Dreams,—
  Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_

And I had scarcely ended when the casement opened.

"Stephen!" said the Lady Adeliza.

"Dear love!" said he.

"Humph!" said I.

Here a rope-ladder unrolled from the balcony and hit me upon the head.

"Regard the orchard for a moment," the Lady Adeliza said, with the wonderfullest little laugh.

My cousin indignantly protested, "I have company,—a burr that sticks to me."

"A fool," I explained,—"to keep him in countenance."

"It was ever the part of folly," said she, laughing yet again, "to be swayed by a woman; and it is the part of wisdom to be discreet. In any event, there must be no spectators."

So we two Allonbys held each a strand of the ladder and stared at the ripening apples, black globes among the wind-vext silver of the leaves. In a moment the Lady Adeliza stood between us. Her hand rested upon mine as she leapt to the ground,—the tiniest velvet-soft ounce-weight that ever set a man's blood a-tingle.

"I did not know—" said she.

"Faith, madonna!" said I, "no more did I till this. I deduce but now that the Marquis of Falmouth is the person you discoursed of an hour since, with whom you hope to enter the Castle of Content."

"Ah, Will! dear Will, do not think lightly of me," she said. "My father—"

"Is as all of them have been since Father Adam's dotage," I ended; "and therefore is keeping fools and honest horses from their rest."

My cousin said, angrily, "You have been spying!"

"Because I know that there are horses yonder?" said I. "And fools here—and everywhere? Surely, there needs no argent-bearded Merlin come yawning out of Brocheliaunde to inform us of that."

He said, "You will be secret?"

"In comparison," I answered, "the grave is garrulous, and a death's-head a chattering magpie; yet I think that your maid, madonna,—"

"Beatris is sworn to silence."

"Which signifies she is already on her way to Monsieur de Puysange. She was coerced; she discovered it too late; and a sufficiency of tears and pious protestations will attest her innocence. It is all one." I winked an eye very sagely.

"Your jesting is tedious," my cousin said. "Come, Adeliza!"

Blaise, my lord marquis' French servant, held three horses in the shadow, so close that it was incredible I had not heard their trampling. Now the lovers mounted and were off like thistledown ere Blaise put foot to stirrup.

"Blaise," said I.

"Ohé!" said he, pausing.

"—if, upon this pleasurable occasion, I were to borrow your horse—"

"Impossible!"

"If I were to take it by force—" I exhibited my coin.

"Eh?"

"—no one could blame you."

"And yet perhaps—"

"The deduction is illogical," said I. And pushing him aside, I mounted and set out into the night after my cousin and the Lady Adeliza.

4. All Ends in a Puff of Smoke

They rode leisurely enough along the winding highway that lay in the moonlight like a white ribbon in a pedlar's box; and staying as I did some hundred yards behind, they thought me no other than Blaise, being, indeed, too much engrossed with each other to regard the outer world very strictly. So we rode a matter of three miles in the whispering, moonlit woods, they prattling and laughing as though there were no such monster in all the universe as a thrifty-minded father, and I brooding upon many things beside my marquisate, and keeping an ear cocked backward for possible pursuit.

In any ordinary falling out of affairs they would ride unhindered to Teignmouth, and thence to Allonby Shaw; they counted fully upon doing this; but I, knowing Beatris, who was waiting-maid to the Lady Adeliza, and consequently in the plot, to be the devil's own vixen, despite an innocent face and a wheedling tongue, was less certain.

I shall not easily forget that riding away from the old vicomte's preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. The horses' hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon cradle-song that rang idly in my brain. 'Twas little to me—now—whether the quest were won or lost; yet, as I watched the Lady Adeliza's white cloak tossing and fluttering in the wind, my blood pulsed more strongly than it is wont to do, and was stirred by the keen odors of the night and by many memories of her gracious kindliness and by a desire to serve somewhat toward the attainment of her happiness. Thus it was that my teeth clenched, and a dog howled in the distance, and the world seemed very old and very incurious of our mortal woes and joys.

Then that befell which I had looked for, and I heard the clatter of horses' hoofs behind us, and knew that Monsieur de Puysange and his men were at hand to rescue the Lady Adeliza from my fine-looking young cousin, to put her into the bed of a rich fool. So I essayed a gallop.

"Spur!" I cried;—"in the name of Saint Cupid!"

With a little gasp, she bent forward over her horse's mane, urging him onward with every nerve and muscle of her tender body. I could not keep my gaze from her as we swept through the night. Picture Europa in her traverse, bull-borne, through the summer sea, the depths giving up their misshapen deities, and the blind sea-snakes writhing about her in hideous homage, while she, a little frightened, thinks resolutely of Crete beyond these unaccustomed horrors and of the god desirous of her contentation; and there, to an eyelash, you have Adeliza as I saw her.

But steadily our pursuers gained on us: and as we paused to pick our way over the frail bridge that spanned the Exe, their clamor was very near.

"Take care!" I cried,—but too late, for my horse swerved under me as I spoke, and my lord marquis' steed caught foot in a pile of lumber and fell heavily. He was up in a moment, unhurt, but the horse was lamed.

"You!" cried my Cousin Stephen. "Oh, but what fiend sends me this burr again!"

I said: "My fellow-madmen, it is all one if I have a taste for night-riding and the shedding of noble blood. Alack, though, that I have left my brave