The dryad a novel
duchess, appraising his bulk, did not resent his possessive gaze.
"Who are you, sir?" she asked, in a voice more amiable, while she
motioned to her attendant to rein his zeal.
Simon made her a leg.
"Lady, I am a soldier of fortune voyaging to Athens to seek for service
under the bully duke, but your concern is not with me but with his
countship yonder."
The Duchess of Thebes looked down again upon the fair sleeping body on
the sward.
"How did Sir Rainouart come here?" she demanded, and Simon answered:
"Being foolish enough to overstay sunset near these woods in the
reading of silly verses, he was set upon by footpads who thought to
kill and strip him, but a girl who lives in these woods scared them
away. The rascals took her for a witch, tumbling plump on them from
the thicket, and gave leg-bail. It was the devil take the hindermost,
I promise you; you would have laughed to see them scamper. The maid
tended his wounds, that were little enough save for an ugly clip on the
crown, and what should my young gentleman do but fall in love with his
sweet nurse and she with him. I think they have plighted their troth,
for he has proffered her a ring, and this daughter of the forest bids
fair to end her days as Duchess of Athens."
The red blood raged in the woman's face, staining its ivory. "That she
shall never be," she said in her heart. "I love this youth, and will
not yield him." For, indeed, she had loved him with what Esclaramonde
called love, in those painted days in Paris, before in despite she had
taken Nemours for her husband, the old Duke of Thebes, who had lately
left her an eager widow. What she spoke aloud was:
"A likely tale that Duke Baldwin's son should woo to mate a peasant."
"She is no peasant, I promise you," Simon answered, doggedly. He did
not choose to tell what the girl had told him, for he was very far from
sure that he believed it himself, and he was very sure, indeed, that no
one else would believe it. "She is no peasant, whatever she be. These
ears heard him ask her in marriage, and here lies the ring he proffered
her."
Simon held out the rosary ring on his brown palm. The duchess's white
hand dived at it as a peregrine dives on his prey, and caught it before
he could guess or prevent her purpose. He had ever been used to dealing
with damsels ready to snatch any trifles they might spy from their
chance companions, and, being of a business-like humor in such matters,
he made now as if to clutch the ring back again, just as if he were
toying with a Corinthian doxy. But the duchess gave a sidelong glance
at her escort, and in an instant a dozen swords were naked and aimed
at Simon's breast, and Simon, being a sensible man, gave up the idea
of further argument or expostulation. The duchess moved nearer to one
of the torch-bearers, and in the orange light she looked at the ring
covetously, much for its own rich beauty, for she loved all costly
toys, and more because it seemed to mean a man's love for another
woman, a man's love that should be, might be, hers. For the sanctity of
the symbolism of the ring she had no thought at all.
"I will take better care of it," she said, with a queer smile, as
she came near again to Simon and the youth at Simon's feet. Her evil
wits, shuttles in the loom of deadly sins, were nimbly weaving a web
of guile. Rainouart stirred uneasily as she came near, for the sleep
that the woodland creatures can give may be molested by the coming of a
hostile presence. The duchess looked down into his twitching face.
"See, he begins to wake," she said. "Give place all of you, and keep
the tall soldier in ward."
At her command the duchess's people, knights and men-at-arms and
torch-bearers, taking Simon, very reluctant, with them, drew away a
little distance to the edge of the forest. He could see how, on the
high-road eager heads peeped again from between the curtains of the
litters of the duchess's women, and he grinned to think how little they
could see of the business. But he was heartily wishing himself well out
of the whole bother, and was casting about for a means of escape from
it.
Meanwhile the Duchess Esclaramonde kneeled down on the grass beside
Rainouart, watching him with malign eyes. The ring that she had taken
from Simon she placed deliberately on her left hand. Then she drew from
her right a ring set with a royal ruby, and, taking Rainouart's limp
hand in hers, thrust it onto the finger where the red mark showed her
that he had been wont to wear the ring she now wore. At her touch the
youth turned his head once or twice like a man who dreams bad dreams,
and then opened his eyes heavily. He groped with his arms as if seeking
some dear presence.
"Where are you, love?" he asked, faintly.
Instantly Esclaramonde answered him.
"Here, my dear lord," she whispered, passionately, and she bowed her
dark head tenderly over him.
Rainouart, his senses hurriedly returning, gazed with wonder into her
fair, familiar face, and for an instant deemed himself in France, in
Paris, at the court of King Philip. He lifted himself a little on one
arm, for he was stronger now with the strength given by deep sleep, and
realized that he was in the forest, but that Esclaramonde was bending
over him.
"I crave your pardon, lady," he said. "When came you here? I seek
another, she who was here but now."
The dark eyes of the duchess swam in the sad waters of anxiety, and
well-feigned amazement was painted on her face.
"Of what other do you speak, dear lord?" she asked. "I have been here
by your side ever since those villains fell upon you."
Rainouart looked dully at her and overmuttered her words, trying to
interpret their meaning.
"You have been by my side?" he asked.
The duchess wound her arms tightly about him and kissed his forehead
hotly, and the kiss troubled him, for the woman was very beautiful and
his flesh was strange to kisses. Esclaramonde spoke in his ear low and
quick.
"I was journeying to Athens, travelling by night for my whim and
pleasure, and by happy chance passed by here at the time when you were
bested. The coming of my people frightened the knaves from you, and
they fled, with some of mine in pursuit. We were alone together"--she
lowered her eyelids for a moment, craftily modest--"and I tended your
wounds."
The prince made to free himself bodily from those embracing arms,
mentally from the net-work of those bewildering words. It was easy to
free himself from her clasp, though he did so with all courtesy and
rather as one unwilling and unworthy to be so greatly honored, but it
was harder to free his spirit from the meshes of her lying tale.
"You speak strangely," he said, vaguely, wondering if this were parcel
of a dream. "Surely you did not tend me? Where is she?"
His haggard eyes wandered over the moonlit space towards the darkling
wood and marvelled at the solemn presence of the men-at-arms. Again
Esclaramonde wound her arms around him, reluctant, and there was an
agony of solicitude in the duchess's voice, an ecstasy of tenderness in
her eyes, as she cried to him, clasping him tighter to her warm body:
"My lord, my dear lord, what trouble has come to you? It was but a few
poor moments ago that you told me how you loved me."
The prince looked despairingly into that beautiful, sensual face, and
he remembered how it had shone in its splendor over the festivals at
Paris. It was very lovely to behold, alluring, commanding, yielding,
insisting, but it was not the loveliness his white spirit had longed
for then or the worshipped loveliness his memory longed for now.
"I told you that I loved you?" The sound of his voice was full of
doubt, and yet it went hard with his knightly heart to doubt the word
of a woman.
Esclaramonde's pale cheeks filled with flame.
"With words too flattering sweet for me to echo," she whispered, and
she stooped, and her eager face was close to his and her dark hair
brushed his forehead, and she kissed him on the mouth at once sharply
and suavely, and the fire from her lips ran through his veins.
"You gave me a ring which I shall wear forever." She withdrew one
clinging arm from about his neck and held a smooth hand before him, and
he saw on her finger the ring that had been his own for so long, the
ring that had been his mother's, that she had made him promise when
she gave it to him never to part with save to the loveliest and the
worthiest. "You took a ring from me." She lifted his hand a little and
he stared stupidly at the great ruby.
"Have you forgotten?" Esclaramonde cried. "Can men forget so soon?" Her
eyes swam in obedient tears.
The maze of the man's mind showed tragically in his eyes, and then he
spoke, but rather to himself than to the woman by his side.
"Which is the dream?" he asked. "I thought when I fell that a white
girl came from the woods and succored me, a divine child, the
loveliest--"
Esclaramonde shifted her body a little away from him, though still she
clasped him fast and he could not in courtesy release her clinging
fingers.
"Dear my lord," she protested, pathetically, "my overvaunted beauty may
be of little account; still it is not many seconds since you chose to
call me passing fair."
The prince, looking at Esclaramonde, knew that she was very fair
indeed. There was for the merely desirous no more desirable woman of
all the French dames dwelling in Greece.
"You are very fair," he said, truly, "but you are not she whom I saw."
And once again his anxious eyes looked longingly over the silver grass
towards the implacable silence of the wood.
"She was some dream," Esclaramonde answered him, earnestly, her warm
lips close to his flushed cheek, her soft breath fanning his troubled
face. "She was a vision born of the quick fever of your wounds. You
swooned again after our change of vows and change of rings, and in
this swoon you must have dreamed this dream of another who was not I.
Indeed, you murmured snatches of strange speech in your sleep which
astounded me, but such delirium is common with men in your case. Will
you stain your knightly faith and deny your honor for the sake of a
sick dream?"
Great waves of doubt flooded the prince's struggling consciousness,
overwhelming it, drowning it. Was she, in very fact, no more than a
vision, that white child of the woods with her yellow hair and her
haunting eyes and her perfect body? Did the help he had dreamed of
really come to him from this splendid, voluptuous creature who had
striven to allure him in France? Was it those insistent hands that had
brought healing to his hurt? Was it those passionate lips that had
soothed him to sleep? Was it those enticing eyes that had summoned
love to take possession of his stainless soul? His thoughts were all a
tangle, his fever burned bright as his eyes travelled vaguely from the
unfamiliar ring upon his finger to his mother's ring upon the finger
of Esclaramonde. One thing alone seemed plain to him where all was
imbroglio. If in whatever bewildering way he had pledged his word to
this lady, his word must be kept.
"If I gave you my knightly faith, lady," he said, faintly, "I may not
take it again."
The eyes of the duchess were triumphant torches, success was throned in
her smiling face. But the pallor of Rainouart's face grew greater, for
the spiritual strife within him had weakened him more than his loss of
blood, and Esclaramonde, watching him, believed he was about to swoon
again. She turned and made a sign in the direction where her following
stood, huddled together, a group of lances and flaring torches on the
lip of the wood. The golden page quitted the little throng and ran to
his mistress.
"Bring me some wine, Bohemond," she ordered.
The page sped back to the litter and returned to his mistress with a