The dryad a novel
brimmed with wine. Dexterously and unseen of Rainouart she drew from
her girdle a tiny golden phial, jerked the contents into one of the
goblets and slipped the phial out of sight. Then she poured two full
cups of wine, and held out the treasonable cup in her white hand to her
lover.
"Pledge our health and happiness," she said, and her voice and eyes
commanded, though voice and eyes seemed only to entreat.
As a shaft of sunlight suddenly pierces a mist, so suddenly did
Rainouart's promise to the Prince of Eleusis drive its dart through the
dark web of desire that enveloped his mind. Through all the wedding
ceremony, through all the later festival, overcrowed by the magic of
Esclaramonde, he had forgotten that pledge to the knight who had
conquered him. Now it lived again with the duchess's proffer and beat
furiously at his heart. He took the cup from his bride's hands and
looked eagerly into her eyes, luminous and cryptic as the eyes of a
sphinx.
"To your health, Fidelity," he murmured, half in idolatry, half in
irony, as he lifted the cup to his lips.
The words "feign to drink" now buzzed in his ears imperative, and he
seemed to see that in the glance of Esclaramonde which accentuated
their meaning. He carried the cup to the open window and looked out
over the wide plain of Attica. He was conscious that the duchess was
watching him curiously, and the words of the stranger knight seemed
to scourge his numbed intelligence into vitality. Looking steadily at
Esclaramonde, he tilted the cup, but no drop of the red wine rippled
over his lips. Then he set down the cup on the window-ledge and moved
towards his consort. "Feign to sleep" hummed in his ears, and he moved
sluggishly, obedient to a will that proved stronger than the will of
Thebes.
"Is not the night warm and heavy?" he asked, and his lips and his
lids seemed drawn with desire of sleep. Turning towards the casement
he pointed at the Athenian sky blazing with its myriad eyes. "The
stars swoon and fall from heaven!" he cried. He moved towards her with
a reeling gait. "Shall I catch you a handful," he gasped, and so,
struggling towards her with out-stretched palms, he stumbled to the
table and fell across it with his face between his arms, a seeming heap
of sleeping flesh.
The duchess, who had sipped prettily at her cup while she watched
him, now set the vessel down upon the table, and bending softly over
Rainouart, touched him on the shoulder, and whispered his name to him,
wooing. But Rainouart of Athens lay inanimate, making no sign, and the
lady of Thebes smiled malignly.
"Sleep sound, my prince," she muttered, "and dream content, and wake
fresh and credulous. My boy-lover is fairer than you, and he woos with
a golden apple."
She turned away from her motionless lord, and took up a little golden
lamp that stood burning on the table hard by the beaker of wine. Going
to the open window, she leaned out into the blueness of the night, and
held the lamp high above her head, and its tiny flame burned steadily
in the still air. The enchanting beauty of the Athenian plain, steeped
in moonlight and starlight, haunted by a million divine memories, said
nothing to Esclaramonde. She was thinking only of a golden toy which
she desired to own, and of a youth with golden hair whom she desired
to kiss. After a little while she came back to the room and set down
the lamp, and walked about slowly hither and thither as a cat walks,
crooning to herself the burden of an ancient song:
"Dwelt a queen in Nineveh
(_Take my heart, Semiramis_),
Fairer than the dawn of day
In the strength of summer is;
Falser than the Moon of May
Mirrored in the black abyss
Of the stream by Nineveh,
Where the bodies drift and sway
Of the lords who loved amiss,
Of the drowned who died for this--
Once to hold a queen at play,
Once her crimson mouth to kiss;
Tigris bears them to the bay,
Far away from Nineveh
(_Take my heart, Semiramis_)."
XXII
REMEMBER THE GREENWOOD
She had scarcely finished the verse when the arras at the side of the
window was drawn back, the little door of the turret-stair closed,
and Argathona came into the room. She was habited in white, with a
silken tunic girdled with a golden belt, and she looked like a noble
youth. She entered so quietly that Esclaramonde did not know of her
coming till she turned in her pacing of the floor and saw the slender,
beautiful figure facing her.
Esclaramonde moved eagerly to the new-comer, with out-stretched hands
and eyes bright with cupidity.
"You are welcome," she said, quickly, and indeed she was pleased to
greet the radiant youth, but her hottest thought was for the promised
toy, and she added, "Give me my gift."
Argathona came a little way down the room, looking steadfastly at the
man who lay across the table with his head between his extended arms.
"Is your lord asleep?" she asked, and the duchess made a grimace as she
answered:
"He is never my lord, though I be ever his lady. Where is your toy of
the gods?"
Argathona was still looking at the recumbent figure, and she questioned
again:
"You are sure he is asleep?"
Esclaramonde clasped and unclasped her fine fingers impatiently.
"You tease like a peevish child," she protested. "I blended his drink
with such syrups that the trump of Jove would not wake him for an hour
to come. Quick, my gift."
Argathona slipped her hand into the pouch that hung from her girdle,
and let her fingers rest on the golden apple that lay there. She felt
that she trembled as she touched it, and that her heart was beating to
a most unfamiliar time. For now she was face to face with her enemy,
now or never she must prevail upon her enemy to unspell the spell that
had been cast upon her lover. She spoke again, while she still kept the
apple hidden.
"You remember the terms of our bargain? If I give you the golden apple
you give me your love."
"Yes," Esclaramonde cried, angrily, "yes, fretful. Why do you waste
time thus?"
Now Argathona drew out the golden apple from her pouch and showed
it in the hollow of her hand. That golden apple was a wonderful
toy, for while it had all the shape and semblance of the living
fruit, it glowed on the white palm of the dryad as if its precious
metal had been steeped in the essential sunlight, in the essential
starlight, and forever gave off something of the glory of the sun
and stars. The duchess glowed a lively red as she saw the splendid
idol, and instinctively, for an instant, shielded with her fingers
her eyes against its brightness, while she gave a little animal cry
of admiration. But she swiftly lowered her fingers from her face and
made a clutch at the marvellous image, but Argathona avoided her, and
Argathona's hand shut over the apple.
"What will you tell your lord when he wakes?" she asked, still gazing
at young Athens where he lay.
The duchess banged her hands together, and her eyes blazed with
frustrated covetousness.
"If you call him my lord again," she cried, "I shall hate you. He is my
servant, my slave, my puppet; he shall believe what I please when he
wakes. Why, he will not know that he has slept at all, and as for this
trinket, how can he know what riches I hold in my treasury at Thebes?
Give me my gift, sweet minion."
Argathona looked straight into the face of Esclaramonde, and her eyes
were bright and stern.
"Do you love this man?" she asked, and she pointed with the hand that
held the desirable apple to where Rainouart lay huddled on the table.
Esclaramonde made a face of disdain.
"Love is a word of many meanings. He is a prince and he is rich; he is
young and he is comely. He is different from the others I have loved,
and for the time he pleases me."
Argathona's face was set and her voice was cold as she spoke again,
asking the fateful question,
"How did you come to care for this man?"
The duchess gave a little laugh that brimmed with malicious memories.
"I knew him first a while ago in France, when he was counted a cold
monster, and indeed I failed to melt his ice, though I tried my
liveliest. Then fate flung him at my feet the other day in the haunted
wood."
"And he loved you at once," Argathona asked, "loved you with all his
heart and soul?"
Esclaramonde flung back her crowned head and laughed mockingly at her
questioner.
"Am I not comely enough to be so loved?" she retorted, and Argathona,
seizing sudden chance, bent her head in acquiescence.
"If he love you so well," she sighed, "were it not shame for us to do
him wrong? Let us part now in honor, and when he wakes you will rejoice
to be worthy of his loyal love."
And Argathona made as if she would go from the room, but she was
cunning, and the golden apple gleamed through the net of her fingers.
Rage flamed hotly in the eyes and cheeks of Esclaramonde.
"You question like a cold priest," she complained, "when you should
clasp like a warm lover. But you can go if you please when you give me
the trinket."
And she held out her hand imperiously, but Argathona still kept the
apple. Now Esclaramonde was very loath to lose her lover though she
professed indifference, and she was firmly determined to gain the apple.
"Nay," said Argathona, craftily, "I am a Greek and give nothing for
nothing. But I would your lord were not so single-hearted a lover, for
my vows deny me to wrong him."
Esclaramonde clinched her hands so tightly that the nails of her
fingers hurt her palms.
"You are a precise fool," she raged; "but you can send your fastidious
conscience to sleep. For though my husband loves me now and thinks he
never loved other woman, he gave his great heart like a baby to some
country girl in the woods."
Argathona held out the globe of gold alluringly, just out of reach of
the duchess, while she asked, "Are you sure of this?" and Esclaramonde,
her hungry eyes fixed on the apple and her hungry senses fixed upon the
youth, answered vehemently:
"Most sure, for in truth it was not I who saved him from the robbers.
When I came he was senseless on the grass, and a tall fellow that stood
by told me a tale of some forest girl who scared away the thieves, and
to whom my love-calf promptly gave his heart. Indeed, when he came to
his senses I had much ado to persuade him that this girl was the trick
of a fevered dream, and that I was his rescuer, I his promised wife."
The dryad watched her with firm, unchanging eyes. So, long ago, her
mother in the woodland might have watched unfearing the dangerous
presence of a snake.
"Why did you do this?" Argathona asked. "Did you love him so very
dearly?"
The duchess laughed impatiently, for the apple proved harder to win
than she had deemed, and the telling of the tale vexed her a little.
"I love very dearly the gift that he can give. Though I be a great lady
he makes me a greater. It is much to be Duchess of Thebes to-day; it is
more to be Duchess of Athens to-morrow."
There was a little pause, and Argathona's eyes travelled from the
duchess to the man at the table and back again.
"Come," cried Esclaramonde, "are you content? Think nothing of him. I
will wear him as the rich cloak of my loves."
The duchess was looking eagerly at Argathona, and Argathona, glancing
aside, saw that the man at the table stirred and seemed about to move,
and she saw that the prince's fingers were gripping the hilt of his
dagger.
"I am content," Argathona answered, and tossed the golden apple to
Esclaramonde, who caught it in the cup of her joined hands joyously.
"Yet I think there were a better gift for you."
"What is that?" Esclaramonde questioned, greedily, and as she spoke the