The dryad a novel
"I will watch your triumph from the gallery," Esclaramonde said, and he
turned and left her with no other word, and went down the stairway into
the court-yard.
Esclaramonde waited a little while, watching him depart and thinking
Thessalian thoughts. He was under her spell; he had forgotten what
she willed him to forget; he should never remember while she was by
his side. That he was only her lover through the make-believe of her
philtres and her will troubled her nothing. He was her lover, comely
and young, and she saw herself Duchess of Athens, and her heart leaped
and she laughed at times. When Rainouart was out of sight and she was
tired of her thoughts, she turned to the far end of the gallery, where
her immediate women waited, and summoned them with a gesture to follow
her to her appointed pavilion by the lists.
XV
THE CHALLENGE OF RAINOUART
Rainouart walked slowly down the sacred mound through the long lines
of soldiers that made a lane for the gentry all along the winding road
and at the foot of the hill. He went as he always went after parting
with Esclaramonde in these few fantastic hours--like one in a feverish
day-dream who found himself unfamiliar amid familiar surroundings. The
realities of life distorted themselves into unrealities; your simple
soldier standing on guard in his rank loomed monstrous as a giant;
your habitual building chose to enlarge and radiate door upon door and
gallery upon gallery into infinite, meaningless space. Rainouart walked
airily, for his physical condition seemed strangely light; he walked
warily, because his mental condition seemed strangely heavy. He was
troubled at he knew not what; he wondered, he knew not why; he thought
ceaselessly of Esclaramonde, and yet the thought of her seemed always
to tease his drugged memory with a desire for some face, some voice,
that were not the face and voice of the Duchess of Thebes. So, like a
man that walks in sleep, he came from the Acropolis to the meadow at
its foot, heedless of the mass of folk, heedless of the clamor and the
flapping banners, the eager mien of knights and the radiant faces of
ladies, only conscious that his duty in life was that day to sustain in
arms the fame of the Lady Esclaramonde.
As he passed through the wicket into the lists and found himself in
the vacant space behind the galleries, he was accosted by a young
knight, partly armored, whose words and gesture invited him to a halt.
The young knight was Argathona, daintily boyish in her man's armor.
When she and Simon had made their way to the tilting-field they found
that a pavilion had been allotted to the Prince of Eleusis by order
of Count Ernault, wherein were placed the arms and armor promised by
the different knights, while the white horse of Andronicus Palæologus
waited in the stables to carry its new burden. Simon of Rouen, as the
strange prince's esquire, helped his seeming master to arm swiftly,
and thus Argathona was ready to meet Rainouart as he entered the
enclosed meadow. Rainouart did not recognize her face, for it was the
woodland will of the dryad that she should seem unfamiliar to him. The
aura of the immortals was about her, and mortal eyes must see her as
she pleased. But there is a power higher even than the wills of such
immortals, and the young prince, looking into the face of the youth who
stopped him, found his strange stupor troubled with new torments of
striving to remember the unrememberable. He could not assure himself
that he had ever seen the stranger's face before, and yet the sight
of that strange face, with its gleam of golden hair beneath the silken
cap, with its haunting suggestions of sea wave and lake water and
forest fountain in its blue eyes, troubled him with an aching desire
and the yet more aching knowledge that he knew not what he desired.
If he had loved some woman in his boyhood, some woman long dead, this
might have been her brother come upon him unawares, at all adventure,
with some trick of the old love's look in his eyes, of the old love's
carriage in his gait. But he shook himself impatiently, for there was
no such memory in his life, and he was vexed with the blind, maimed
memories that would never take shape and color. Through the dull hum
of his confused thoughts he was conscious that the stranger knight
addressed him.
"Rainouart of Athens, are not you to-day the general challenger?"
Rainouart saluted him mechanically, looking into his eyes and only
finding there unanswerable mysteries.
"At your service, sir knight," he answered, and the sound of his own
voice seemed as meaningless to him as the thin sighs of spirits heard
in dreams, and yet he knew that he had spoken and that his hearer had
heard and understood. Through all the entanglement of his senses he was
conscious dimly of a curious surprise at his own ability to understand
the stranger's speech, and his wonderment seemed to hark back to some
other time, some other age, perhaps some other existence, when in some
way he had heard one speak to him whom he understood and yet marvelled
to understand.
"What are the terms of your challenge?" the stranger knight asked him.
The prince answered, slowly:
"That my Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is the rose of the world."
There was a moment's pause, and the prince made to resume his journey,
but again the stranger stopped him with a question:
"You love this lady?"
The prince looked wonderingly at the fair, perplexing face.
"I wed her to-night," he answered, and still the stripling persisted:
"You are very sure you love this lady?"
The prince hesitated, then said, sharply:
"You question somewhat rustically. I wed her to-night."
Again the strange knight interrogated, pertinacious:
"You have left no other love for her sake?"
The prince drew back and set his hand to his sword.
"Sir," he said, angrily, "if you question my honor I will answer you to
your hurt!"
The bearer of the name of Prince of Eleusis came a little nearer to
Rainouart, and her voice was as plaintive as summer rain on forest
leaves.
"No maid weeps for you in the greenwood?"
The prince shifted his hand from his sword-hilt to his brow, for
his head ached with confusing, formless memories; but the troubling
thoughts fled elusive through his brain, leaving no more behind them
than the blackened spaces left by a forest fire.
"The greenwood!" he echoed. "The greenwood! It was in the greenwood
my lady found me." He paused again, ever seeking to remember the
unrememberable, then ended, rapidly, "The Lady Esclaramonde, whom I
love, and whose love makes me invincible."
Infinitely sad the eyes of Argathona shone upon her lost lover's
sadness. Against the spells of the subtle sorceress her simple
immortality seemed compelled to surrender. Were she to declare
herself now, she might fail to quicken the wit that was crippled by
the incantations of Esclaramonde. Only Esclaramonde could undo what
Esclaramonde had done, and to bring this about Argathona must trust to
herself--she, the immortal, alone in an unfriendly world. Argathona had
lived but a few hours in the company of men, yet she had lived with
them long enough to pity all, to mistrust most, to love one with a love
as abiding as her gift of ceaseless life. But her unstained spirit read
clearly and swiftly the lessons of the world's law, and she hoped to
overthrow the guile of a woman with the guile of a girl.
"You are very proud of your love and your lover," she said, gently,
for her heart ached to see him so astray. Rainouart answered her with a
kind of resentful defiance, as one that sought to convince himself, and
he echoed her words:
"I am very proud of my love," and so far his voice rang clear and
bright as a battle-call; then he ended, more heavily, "and of my lover."
He turned from her with a courteous salutation and went towards his
tent, and Argathona went her way to her own pavilion and made an end of
her arming, thinking upon many things.
XVI
THE TOURNAMENT
Captain Fox and Captain Gander, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer,
Captain Rat and Captain Badger had thoroughly enjoyed their visit to
Athens. The first day of the tournament had come and gone and left
them very substantially the better in paunch and pocket. On this, the
second day, they hoped, and with reason, for still fairer fortune,
and severally, and as a corporation, made liberal vows of wax candles
to St. Nicholas if their hopes should come true. They moved at ease
through the assemblage outside the lists, clad in the disguises that
time had taught them to be best suited to each man's individuality.
Captain Fox, who had a persuasive tongue, went as a mendicant friar and
vended relics. Captain Gander, because he could sing a catch at random
with some volume of voice, jigged and whistled, minced and ambled as
a wandering minstrel. Captain Bat was a lame beggar, arm in sling,
patch on eye, a maimed hero, victim of wars, voluble of sorrows, and
eloquent in appeal. Captain Chanticleer skipped hither and thither as a
glib-lipped fortune-teller, and fumbled dirty pieces of wood that were
painted with pips and points and dots of mystical meanings. Captain Rat
and Captain Badger, who had each some skill in tumbling, clowned to
the crowd as itinerant mountebanks, and paraded alternately one on the
other's shoulders inviting the world to see wonders.
So dexterous were all these gentry in their assumed occupations that
their legitimate receipts represented a very fair proportion of the
day's earnings. Therefore, as Captain Fox pithily observed, they did
very well both as honest folk and as rogues. But while their hands
were busy in emptying the pouches of others to fill their own, their
eyes were not idle or indifferent to the pleasures which Duke Baldwin
provided for knave as well as for knight. Experience of camps had made
the gang of rascals acquainted with the bearings of many warlike lords,
and they were able to blazon with confidence to a gaping crowd about
them most of the coats displayed upon the shields that hung before the
pavilions in the lists.
Thus said Captain Fox to his audience: "The black pale on a silver
field proclaims the Prince of Epirus. The red bend on the gold enriched
with three laurel wreaths on the field is the bearing of Andronicus
Palæologus, who longs to wear the imperial laurels of Constantinople.
The six gold lozenges on purple are the arms of Sir Jaufre de Brabant.
The three boars' heads of silver on the black field assert Sir Ambrose
of Blois. The golden stag at gaze on a green field stands for Sir
Raymond of Provence. The golden dolphin on the orange field represents
Sir Guy de Hainault. The shield divided per pale green and silver
and charged with a scarlet castle, from whose summit emerges a black
dragon, belongs to Fernand Ximenes, the aspiring Spaniard." Only one
cognizance baffled the garrulity of Captain Fox that day. There was a
shield bearing a golden acorn on a green field that was as unfamiliar
to him as to his hearers. So he looked mighty wise, gabbled some patter
about mysteries that might not be revealed, and went on to explain,
what every one of course knew, that Prince Rainouart carried a golden
shield with no charge upon it, and that the lord-marshal, Count
Ernault, carried potent blue and silver. Of many another knight that
day, of many more armorial bearings, Captain Fox discoursed learnedly
enough to such as would listen to him, and generally succeeded while
his tongue wagged in impoverishing his hearers of some jewel, purse,
or button, dexterously nipped by his thievish fingers. But at least
the plundered person, when he discovered his loss and Captain Fox had