“Oh! write to whom you will, but I cannot—will not—help you”; and the youth, who knew nothing of my affections, and to whom I had never spoken of a woman before, walked away to the tent door and lifting the flap, looked out over the dim French hills, seeming marvelous perturbed.
Poor lad, I thought to myself, how soft he is! My love reminds him of his own, and hence he fears to touch a lover pen. And yet he must. He can write twice as ingenious, shrewd as I, and no one else could do this letter half so well. “Come, Flamaucœur! indeed, you must help me. If you are so sorry over your own reflections, why, the more reason for lending me thy help. We are companions in this pretty grief, and should render to each the help due between true brothers in misfortune. I do assure you I have near broken a maiden heart back in England.”
“Perhaps she was unworthy of thy love—why should you write?”
“Unworthy! Gods! She was unhappy, she was unfortunate—but unworthy, never! Why, Flamaucœur, here, as I have been chewing the cud of reflection all these days, I have begun to think she was the whitest, sweetest maid that ever breathed.”
“Some pampered, sickly jade, surely, Sir Knight,” murmured the young man in strange jealous-sounding tones whereof I could not fail to heed the bitterness; “let her by, she has forgotten thee mayhap, and taken a new love—those pink-and-white ones were ever shallow!”
“Shallow! you wayward boy! By Hoth! had you seen our parting you would not have said so. Why, she wept and clung to me, although no words of love had ever been between us——”
“A jade, a wanton!” sobbed that strange figure there by the shadowy tent-flap, whereon, flaming up, “God’s death!” I shouted, “younker, that goes too far! Curb thy infernal tongue, or neither thy greenness nor unweaponed state shall save thee from my sword!”
“And I,” quoth Flamaucœur, stepping out before me—“I deride thy weapon—I will not turn one hair’s breadth from it—here! point it here, to this heart, dammed and choked with a cruel affection! Oh! I am wretched and miserable, and eager against all my instincts for to-morrow’s horrors!”
Whereat that soft and silly youth turned his gorget back upon me and leaned against the tent-pole most dejectedly. And I was grieved for him, and spun my angry brand into the farthest corner, and clapped him on the shoulder, and cheered him as I might, and then, half mindful to renounce my letter, yet asked him once again.
“Come! thou art steadier now. Wilt thou finally write for me to my leman?”