“At that hour the idea was impossible to me. Thou knowest—’fore God thou knowest—the suffering that time has never eased for me. A thousand times I had vowed then, a hundred times I swore thereafter, that the image of mine own Lenore should never be replaced within my heart; and it holds there to-day as fair and clear as if it were but yesterday she went.
“Many months passed away, madame, and I saw this golden-haired maiden about Rennes,—in the Ladies’ Gallery in the lists, and at feasts in the Castle; yet I had never a thought in my heart of wedding with her. Then—late in the spring—St. Nazaire sent me message of Laure’s disgrace, her excommunication; and my heart bled for thee. I sent out many men to search my sister, but not one ever gathered trace of her. Then, when there was no further hope of restoring her to thee, the idea of marriage came to me for the first time as a duty—toward thee. My whole soul cried out against it. Lenore de Laval reproached me from the heaven where she dwells. And yet—in the end—for thy sake, madame, I brought home with me the gentle child men call my wife.
“I confess it to thee only: I do not love her. Yet indeed none can say that I have used her ill, save as I could not bring myself falsely to act the ardent lover. If she hath been unhappy, then am I greatly grieved. Yet what hath she not that women do desire in life? What lacks there of honor or of pleasure in her estate? Moreover, if she has lost her own mother, hath she not gained thee, dear lady of mine? Mon Dieu, madame,—think not so ill of me. I swear that for me she yearns not at all. Even this afternoon, when all of you had departed from the long room, she did implore me, with sincerest speech, that I depart at early date for Rennes. How likes you that? And moreover, to all my questioning, she did stoutly deny that my going would be for aught but her own pleasure, and would in no way grieve her heart.” And Gerault stared upon his mother with the assured and exasperated look of a doubly injured man.
Madame Eleanore drew herself together and set her lips in the firm resolve still to treat her son with consideration. When she began to speak, her manner was calm and her voice low and quiet; yet in her eyes there gleamed a fire that was not born of patience. “So, Gerault! Doubtless all thou sayest is sooth to thee; yet I would tell thee this: when thou left’st her alone, I came upon her still sitting in the long room, leaning her head upon the table where thou hadst sat, weeping as if her heart was like to break. And when her sobs were still I brought her up to her room and caused her to remove her garments and to seek her bed, though all the while she shook with inward grief, till Alixe brought her a posset, and bathed her head in elder-flower water, and then, at last, she slept.”
“And gave she no name to thee as cause for her malady?”
“Art thou indeed so ignorant of us? Or is it heartlessness? Wilt thou go to Rennes?”
“Hath she not required me to go? Good Heavens, madame! what wouldst have me do?” he answered with weary impatience.
“Gerault, Gerault, if I could by prayer or anger make thee to understand for one instant only! Ah, ’tis the same tale that every woman has to tell. It was so with me. In my early youth I was brought from bright Laval, where I was a queen of gayety and life, to rule alone over this great Twilight Castle. Thy grandam was dead; and there was no other woman of my station here. In a few months after my home-coming as a bride, thy father rode away to join the army of Montfort in the East. From that time I saw my lord but a few weeks in every year; for the war lasted till I had reached the age of four-and-thirty. Thou camest to cheer my loneliness; and then, long after, Laure. And at last, when Laure was in her first babyhood, seventeen years agone, the long struggle ended at Auray; and then my lord, sore wounded in his last fight, came home. Alas! I was no happier for his coming. He had suffered much, and he was no longer young. We two, so long separated, were almost as strangers one to the other. Thou wast his great pride; dost remember how he loved to have thee near him? And many a time it cut me to the heart to hear the bloody, valorous tales he poured into thine ears; for I knew by them that he meant thee to do what he had done. It was not till he lay in his mortal sickness that we came back one to the other; but he died in my arms, whispering to me such words as I had never had from him before. That last is a sweet memory, Gerault; but the tale is none the less grievous of my young life here. And there is the more pity of it that mine is not the only story of such things. Many and many is the weary life led by some high-born lady in her castle, while her lord fights or jousts or drinks his life out in his own selfishness. Through those long years of the war of the Three Jeannes, I suffered not alone of women; and how I suffered, thou canst never know. Do thou not likewise with thy frail Lenore. Stay with her here a little while, and make her life what it might be made with love.”
Gerault listened in non-committal silence. When she finished he turned and faced her squarely: “Hast made this prate of my father and thee to Lenore?” he asked severely.
“Gerault!” The exclamation escaped involuntarily; when it was out Eleanore bit her lip and drew herself up haughtily. “Thou’rt insolent,” she said in a tone that she would have used to an inferior.