Rosin the Beau

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

The room was darker when she was gone; but Yvon cried to me I must see the armory, and the chapel, and a hundred other sights. I followed him like a child, my eyes very round, I doubt not, and staring with all my might. The armory was another of the long halls or corridors that ran along the sides of the courtyard. Here were weapons of all kinds, but chiefly swords; swords of every possible make and size, some of great beauty, others clumsy enough, that looked as if bears should handle them. I had never held a sword in my hand,—how should I?—but Yvon vowed I must learn to fence, and told some story of an ancestor of mine who was the best swordsman in the country, and kept all comers at bay in some old fight long ago. I took the long bit of springy steel, and found it extraordinary comfortable to the hand. Practice with the fiddle-bow since early childhood gave, I may suppose, strength and quickness to the turn of my wrist; however it was, the marquis cried out that I was born for the sword; and in a few minutes again cried to know who had taught me tricks of fence. Honesty knows, I had had no teaching; only my eye caught his own motions, and my hand and wrist answered instantly, being trained to ready obedience. I felt a singular joy in this exercise, Melody. In grace and dexterity it equals the violin; with this difference, which keeps the two the width of the world apart, that the one breeds trouble and strife, while the other may, under Providence, soothe human ills more than any other one thing, save the kindly sound of the human voice.

Make the best defence I could, it was not long before Yvon sent my foil flying from my hand; but still he professed amazement at my ready mastering of the art, and I felt truly that it was natural to me, and that with a few trials I might do as well as he.

Next I must see the chapel, very ancient, but kept smart with candles and crimson velvet cushions. I could not warm to this, feeling the four plain walls of a meeting-house the only thing that could enclose my religious feelings with any comfort; and these not to compare with a free hillside, or the trees of a wood when the wind moves in them. And then we went to the stables, and the gardens, laid out very stately, and his sister's own rose garden, the pleasantest place in the whole, or so I thought.

So with one thing and another, it was late afternoon before Yvon remembered that I must not sleep again without visiting my own tower, as he would call it; and for this, the young lady had leave to go with us. It was a short walk, not more than half a mile, and in a few minutes we were looking up at the tower, that seemed older and sadder by day than it had done in the evening dimness. It stood alone. The body of what had been behind and beside it was gone, but we could trace the lines of a large building, the foundations still remaining; and here and there were piles of cut stone, the same stone as that in the tower. Yvon told me that ever since the castle had begun to fall into decay (being long deserted), the country people around had been in the habit of mending their houses, and building them indeed, often, from the stone of the old château. He pointed to one cottage and another, standing around at little distance. "They are dogs," he cried, "that have each a bit of the lion's skin. Ah, Jacques! but for my father of blessed memory, thy tower would have gone in the same way. He vowed, when he came of age, that this desecration should go no further. He brought the priest, and together they laid a fine curse upon whoever should move another stone from the ruins, or lay hands on La Tour D'Arthenay. Since then, no man touches this stone. It remains, as you see. It has waited till this day, for thee, its propriety."

He had not quite the right word, Melody, but I had not the heart to correct him, being more moved by the thing than I could show reason for. Inside the tower there was a stone staircase, that went steeply up one side, or rather the front it was, for from it we could step across to a wide stone shelf that stood out under the round window. It might have been part of a great chimney-piece, such as there still were in Château Claire. The ivy had reached in through the empty round, and covered this stone with a thick mat, more black than green. Though ready enough to step on this myself, I could not think it fit for Mlle. de Ste. Valerie, and took the liberty to say so; but she laughed, and told me she had climbed to this perch a hundred times. She was light as a leaf, and when I saw her set her foot in her brother's hand and spring across the empty space from the stair to the shelf, it seemed no less than if a wind had blown her. Soon we were all three crouching or kneeling on the stone, with our elbows in the curve of the great window, looking out on the prospect. A fair one it was, of fields and vineyards, with streams winding about, but very small. They spoke of rivers, but I saw none. It was the same with the hills, which Yvon bade me see here and there; little risings, that would not check the breath in a running man. For all that, the country was a fine country, and I praised it honestly, though knowing in my heart that it was but a poor patch beside our own. I was thinking this, when the young lady turned to me, and asked, in her gracious way, would I be coming back, I and my people, to rebuild Château D'Arthenay?

"It was the finest in the county, so the old books say!" she told me. "There was a hall for dancing, a hundred feet long, and once the Sieur D'Arthenay gave a ball for the king, Henri Quatre it was, and the hall was lighted with a thousand tapers of rose-coloured wax, set in silver sconces. How that must have been pretty, M. D'Arthenay!"

I thought of our kitchen at home, and the glass lamps that Mère-Marie kept shining with such care; but before I could speak, Yvon broke in. "He shall come! I tell him he shall come, Valerie! All my life I perish, thou knowest it, for a companion of my sex, of my age. Thou art my angel, Valerie, but thou art a woman, and soon, too, thou wilt leave me. Alone, a hermit in my château, my heart desolate, how to support life? It is for this that I cry to the friend of my house to return to his country, the country of his race; to bring here his respected father, to plant a vineyard, a little corn, a little fruit,—briefly, to live. Observe!" Instantly his hands fluttered out, pointing here and there.

"Jacques, observe, I implore you! This tower; it is now uninhabited, is it not? you can answer me that, though you have been here but a day."

As he waited for an answer, I replied that it certainly was vacant, so far as I could see; except that there must be bats and owls, I thought, in the thickness of the ivy trees.

"Perfectly! Except for these animals, there is none to dispute your entrance. The tower is solid,—of a solidity! Cannon must be brought, to batter down these walls. Instead of battering, we restore, we construct. With these brave walls to keep out the cold, you construct within—a dwelling! vast, I do not say; palatial, I do not say; but ample for two persons, who—who have lived together, à deux, not requiring separate suites of apartments." He waved his hand in such a manner that I saw long sets of rooms opening one after another, till the eye was lost in them.