The Castle of Twilight

by Margaret Horton Potter

“’Tis but a little tale. Like my dead butterfly, I wandered. I come of a race of dwarfs,—all straight-backed, know you, and not ill to look upon. My father was a mountebank. My mother, who measured greater than was customary among us, cooked and sewed and travelled with us whithersoever we went in our wagon. When I was young,—at the age of five or thereabouts,—I began to assist my father in his entertainments. When I was fifteen we were in Rennes for the jousting season, and there thy lord saw me, bought me, and brought me back to you, lady, to be your merry jester. But indeed my laughter hath run low, of late. Long years I have bravely jested through; but now the Twilight spell is creeping over me, and merriment rises no more in my heart. Indeed, I question if I should not beg leave of thee to go forth into the world again for a little time, to learn once more the song of joy. Yet when thou art near, and I look out upon the sea, and behold the sun lifting his glory out of the eastern hills, I ever think I cannot go,—I cannot leave this gentle home of melancholy.”

“Thou art free, David, if freedom is mine to bestow upon thee. Indeed, I could not ask that any one remain in this sad and quiet place, of any than his own will. Go thou forth into the world! Go forth to joy and life and laughter. Fill thy little heart again with jests. Forget the brooding silence of Le Crépuscule, and laugh through the broad world to thy heart’s content. Yet we shall miss thee sorely, little man.”

Madame stopped speaking, and there was a pause. David seemed to have no response to make to her words. Instead he bent over the earth, digging a little hole in the sod. Into this he laid the dead form of his white butterfly. When he had covered it from sight with the black earth, and patted a little earthen mound over it, he rose to his feet with an exaggerated sigh.

“So I bury my friend—and my freedom. My desire is dead, Madame Eleanore, with my freedom. I will remain here among you women-folk, and keep you sad company or merry as you demand. Look! The rim of the sun is pushing over the line of the distant trees!”

“Yea, it is there—far away—in the land where Laure may be, deserted, mayhap, and a wanderer, cast out from every dwelling that she enters!”

Eleanore whispered these words, more to herself than to David. They were an expression of her eternal thought. The dwarf heard them, and sought some comfort for her. But her expression forbade comfort; and, in the end, he did not speak at all. The two of them stood side by side and watched the sun come up the heavens. Presently the Castle awoke, and shortly Alixe came out to the field to feed the young niais and the mother-birds in the falcon-nests. So Eleanore, when she had given the young girl greeting, returned to her solitude in the Castle, finding her heart in some part relieved of its immediate burden.

One by one the lengthening days passed. June came into the world, and palpitated, and glowed with glory and fire, and then died. During this time not a word had come from distant Rennes to tell the Lady of Crépuscule how Gerault fared. The midsummer month came in, and the young men and maidens of the Castle grew gay with the heat, and made riotous expenditure of the riches of Nature. That year the whole earth seemed a tangle of flowers and rich meadow-grass, with which young demoiselles played havoc, while the squires and henchmen hawked and hunted and drank deep. These days stirred Eleanore’s heart once more to love of life, and woke the sleeping soul of Alixe to strange fits of passionate yearning after unattainable ideals. The living earth brought fire to every soul, and the pinched melancholy of winter was dead and forgotten.

On the night of the seventh of July the Castle sat unusually late at meat, for the Bishop had arrived unexpectedly, and, being in a merry mood, deigned to entertain the whole Castle with tales and jests. Just in the middle of a story of Church militant in the war of the three Jeannes, there came the grating noise of the lowering drawbridge, a faint echo of shouts from the men-at-arms in the watch-tower, and the clatter of swift hoofs over the courtyard stones. Half a dozen henchmen ran to open the great door, while Eleanore rose with difficulty to her feet. Her heart had suddenly come into her throat, and she had turned deathly white with an unexpressed hope and an inarticulate fear. There was a little pause. The new-comer was dismounting. Then, after what had seemed a year of waiting, Courtoise walked into the hall, advanced to his liege lady, and bent the knee.

“Courtoise!” gasped Eleanore, faintly. “Courtoise—thy message!”

“Madame,” he cried, “I bring joyful tidings from my lord! He sends thee health, greeting, and duty, and prays you to prepare the Castle for a great feast; for in a week’s time he brings home his bride from Rennes!”