The dryad a novel
furnished and adorned in the most noble manner that the age could
compass. Duke Baldwin loved to be prodigal of pleasures to others
when the prodigality enforced an almost aching sense of gratitude,
and probably any woman in the world, with the exception of the Lady
Esclaramonde, would have felt at least a little grateful to Duke
Baldwin. All that gold and silver and bronze and ivory and ebony
and silks and furs and jewels could lend to make her rooms a little
paradise of luxury had been done under the duke's orders by those who
knew better than the burly duke how to grace the haven of a fair dame.
Money that would have paid twice over the outstanding demands of the
Catalan Grand Company had been squandered with a free hand to make a
fitting background for the imperious beauty of the lady of Thebes. In
fulsome compliment that might have been flagrant irony, the mosaic
walls were hung with exquisite arras, upon which the cunning hands of
many craftsmen had woven amorous images from every passionate tale of
love.
All this the bluff duke had done, and done cheerfully, when his only
thoughts concerning his comely visitor were of a personal nature.
But when the duchess rode to his gates on that May evening, bearing
his son's inanimate body with her, and, while that body still lay
inanimate, told the lord of Athens that her troth was plighted to his
son, Duke Baldwin's cheerfulness dwindled no whit. His palace hummed
with ebullient compliance; he would have no lack of consolation,
while his foolish son had done a wise thing unawares. So Duke Baldwin
resigned without a sigh all thoughts of his fair Theban neighbor, save
as a daughter-in-law, and chuckled inwardly at the little less than
prophetic instinct which had led him to prepare so fair a nest for
her homing. As for Esclaramonde, who had started upon her journey in
a spirit of perfect willingness to entertain with complaisance any
homage that the Duke of Athens might lay at her feet, she now readily
dressed her temper to accept his paternal caresses, while she smiled
significant appreciation of the duke's ostentatious care for her
comfort.
On the evening of the day when the great tournament had been fought and
won and lost, four of the duchess's favorite women, delicate dissolute
minions, waited for their lady's coming in her dimly lit dwelling room.
Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, were huddled together
in the alcove of the window, looking out upon the moonlit plain and
listening to the sounds of revelry in the rooms below. They had left
those rooms, they had left that revelry a little while agone, daintily
flushed with wine, daintily prodigal of love-promises, that they might
be sure that all was ready for their mistress when she rose from the
royal feast. Now they were busy disentangling the imbroglio of their
assignations, pitting lover against lover, and trying to remember times
and places of meeting, lightly agreed to, and no less lightly forgotten
or confused with other trysts.
It had been a wonderful day for the merry girls. There was the
tournament in the morning with its unexpected end. Then there was the
solemn ceremonial of marriage in the afternoon, when the Archbishop
of Athens pronounced his benediction on the heir to the dukedom of
Athens and the wondrous widow of Thebes. Then came the splendid banquet
stretching through the hours. Now in a little while the bridal pair
would be conducted in triumph to the duchess's apartments, and speedily
thereafter Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, would be free
to pick their paths in pursuit of love. Meanwhile they babbled with
bated breath of the duchess, and her old lord, and her many lovers,
and of her fire-new groom who seemed to dwell in a dream even while he
knelt at the altar. But they marvelled most over the stranger knight,
the Prince of Eleusis, the victor of the lists, who came to the banquet
habited in white and gold and sat between two of the fairest ladies
of Duke Baldwin's court, and while he himself spoke little, listened
to their chatter with a bright, indefinable smile. All the women, it
seemed, thought him handsome as the day, and the men swore that he was
a comely youth, and those that were nigh enough to see noted that he
ate no food but fruit and drank no drink but water, and wondered how
such meat could feed such vigor. Each of the gossip girls would have
been glad to see the conqueror at still closer quarters, for their
places at table were far from where he sat. They were experts in the
points of men, and would fain have compared him with their immediate
lovers. But they watched him closely, and thought that he seemed both
merry and sad at the prattle of his companions, and they agreed that
if Sir Rainouart kept his eyes ever upon the face of his bride, their
Lady Esclaramonde shot many a glance of an admiration they knew well
how to interpret at the grave face of the stranger. And therewith the
talk swayed lightly back to their lady, the duchess, and the fair heads
pressed together and the sweet voices chuckled over the echoes of many
scandals.
Suddenly the sounds of revelry beneath them dwindled, and the minxes
heard the swell of joyous music and the tread of marching feet. They
sprang to their feet in haste, ready for obeisance, ready for service.
The mirthful music and the marching feet came nearer and yet nearer,
filling all the stairways and corridors with joyous noise. Then the
great entrance door swung open, and a little cluster of golden pages
entered bearing scented torches that flooded the room with yellow
light. These in turn were followed by a train of fair maidens in white
robes, who scattered white roses on the floor and sang to the music of
a band of lutanists, the epithalamium which Sir Guy of Hainault had
composed in honor of the bride and bridegroom. And this was the song
they sang:
"Lo, the lovely pair are wed,
Making one
Gallantry and goodlihead,
Moon and Sun:
Now we bring the bride to bed,
Wedding done;
Flesh to flesh divinely led,
Bone to bone.
From the pillows where her head
Lay alone
Weary solitude has fled,
Wisely flown.
She must share her wine and bread,
Share her throne,
With the lover, dear and dread,
All her own,
Till the one for other dead
Maketh moan.
All is sung and all is said:
Loose her zone!"
As the last words of the song, the last notes of the music, sobbed away
into silence, the singing maidens made a lane from the door like two
lines of tall white lilies, and through the doorway adown the lane came
Duke Baldwin in his bravery holding the Duchess Esclaramonde by the
hand, while beneath the heavy tramp of the knight and the light tread
of the lady the crushed white petals of the scattered roses suspired
a haunting perfume sickly sweet. Even to the familiar cynical eyes of
her women, Esclaramonde at that moment showed radiantly fair. Flattery
had fanned her cheeks to their loveliest color; triumph had lighted
her eyes with their brightest fire; passion mantled her body with its
atmosphere of flame.
In an instant Rainouart followed, escorted by Count Ernault, and it
seemed to the keen eyes of the dainty waiting-women that his bearing
showed less mazed than of late, and that his look was keener than it
had seemed since his misadventure in the wood. "Marriage will make a
new man of our moon-calf," Yelette whispered into the ears of Aveline,
with a sauciness that was partly resentful, for she remembered with a
sting how, in spite of her allegiance to her mistress, she had wasted
her witcheries on his indifference on the morrow of their arrival at
his father's court. "We may have our turn yet," Aveline answered,
mockingly, for she, too, was one of the tempters who had failed to
tempt, in which particular the two girls from Thebes wore the same kind
of shoes that were worn by every delectable dame of Duke Baldwin's
court. Then "Hush," cried Hildeletha, as through the doorway thronged
those who interested the damsels more than their predecessors.
These were the knights of the court and the knightly visitors--Sir
Guy of Hainault, Sir Jaufre de Brabant, Sir Raymond of Provence, Sir
Ambrose of Blois, and the rest of Duke Baldwin's chivalry; Andronicus
Palæologus, Prince Demetrius of Epirus, and the other noble visitors,
squiring and gallanting smiling women. After these came the leaders
of the Catalan Grand Company, with Fernand Ximenes at their head,
gravely insolent to the ladies they attended, watching the vivid scene
with impassive faces, indifferent to the merrymaking of the man who
owed them their pay, but not indifferent, with the keen eye of your
practised bandit, to the delightful possibilities from the bandit's
point of view, if only Athens were to sack. And so the great room
filled with light and color and laughter, and through all and over all,
immeshing all in slender threads of melody, ran the tender wailing of
the lutes.
Duke Baldwin bowed the Duchess of Thebes to the high seat on the
dais, and paid her some compliments at once florid and full blooded,
which must have embarrassed a maiden, and at which the duchess,
with no little difficulty recalling far earlier memories, affected
embarrassment. Then the lord of Athens, suggesting that the young
couple had liefer be left alone, reminded the assembly of brilliant
men and beautiful women that supper was still towards, and so with
many smiles and salutations and good wishes the bright company faded
in music from the room. A glance and a gesture from Esclaramonde sent
Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, tripping at their heels,
and so the bride and groom were left alone together, face to face in
the place that swooned with the scent of trampled roses.
The man and woman stood opposite to each other for a while in silence,
Esclaramonde thinking inscrutable thoughts, Rainouart gazing at her
like a man who wakes from sleep-walking and wonders why he has come to
such a spot and how. Esclaramonde was habited in a robe of many reds,
subtly blended, for she wished through the richness of these shifting
tints to recall some royal rose imperial in its wealth of crimson
petals, yet still a tender pink at the core. Indeed, Rainouart thought
of a rose as he looked at her: his thoughts had been all of roses since
he saw her so clad at the ducal banquet, and because of the rose his
heart was full of care and travail. While his senses spurred him to woo
such voluptuous beauty, enigmatical memories cried out to him strange
forest cries; it was as if soft voices were calling at his ears,
asking, "Is this the rose of the guarded garden, is this the noble rose
of the world?" But her witchery was potent over his wits; his spirit
seemed tugged this way and that inexplicably; he was bewildered; he
would and he would not. At last he found voice under the spell of those
lamping eyes that lured his pulses, and he stretched out his hands to
the wonderful woman.
"To my arms, fair wife!" he cried, and though his voice sounded
unreal in his ears, as if it were an echo of speech whispered to him
by other lips, it rang real enough in the ears of Esclaramonde, and
almost she regretted for the space of half a second that she could not
answer promptly to the call. But swiftly she thought of the golden
apple, swiftly she remembered that her lord would be no less loving
when the night was a little older, and his senses had rekindled from
unremembered sleep. She lifted her hand for a moment as if to stay his
vehement advance; then she moved to the table, where a golden beaker
stood circled with golden goblets, and she saw that the beaker was