The Castle of Twilight

by Margaret Horton Potter

“Mademoiselle, it is impossible. The boat lies on the beach; two days’ work would not fit her for the water.”

Laure stamped angrily on the floor. “Something, then, something! I will get out into the cold, into the snow; I will move, I will feel, I will breathe again!”

It was so much the wild, free Laure, it had in it so much her old-time magnetism of comradeship, so much the spirit of the dead Gerault, desirous of action, that Alixe and Courtoise were drawn irresistibly into her mood. Both of them moved forward, while Alixe cried gayly: “The hawks! Come, we will ride!”

“The hawks!” echoed Laure. “Run, Courtoise, and get the horses, while Alixe and I go don our riding-garb and jess the birds!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, rather with a throb of pleasure, Courtoise ran obediently away toward the stables, while the young women hurried to their rooms. In twenty minutes the wild trio were dashing across the lowered drawbridge, all well mounted, hawk on wrist, spur at heel, with Laure in the lead. Down the road for the space of a mile they went, and then struck off to the snowy moor. They rode long and they rode hard, finding scarce a single quarry, but letting their pent-up spirits out in this free and healthful exercise. When they came in again to the Castle courtyard, it was in starry darkness; and not one of the three but felt a new strength to resist the dead life of the Castle.

Perhaps, had Courtoise known how Lenore had quietly wept away the afternoon in her solitude and loneliness, he had not appeared at evening meat with air so vigorous, eye so bright, and appetite so ready. Lenore, however, was never known to make a plaint; and she came to table with her cheeks hardly paler than usual, though her downcast eyes were shrunken with tears, and their lids were tinged with feverish red.

Men say that it is one of the irrevocable blessings that Time should move as surely as he does. But when the hours, nay, the minutes, lag away as drearily as they did in Le Crépuscule that winter, one feels no gratitude to Time; but rather a resentment that his immortality should be so dead-alive. Yet winter did pass, however slowly. In March the frozen chains of the prisoned earth were riven. Streams began to flow fast and full. The snow melted and soaked into the rich, black soil, making it ready for the seed. The doors of the peasants’ huts were opened to the sun and rain. Flocks of storks began to fly northward on their return from the Nile to their unsettled fatherland. Spring caught the earth in a tender embrace; and wherever her warm breath touched the soil, a flower appeared, to mark the kiss.

To Lenore the spring warmth was as heaven to a soul newly freed from earth-sorrow and suffering. Now the windows of her room could all be thrown wide open to the outer air. The whole sea lay before her, strewn with sunlight, and frosted with white foam. She saw the fishing-fleet from St. Nazaire go up past the bay, on its way to the herring fisheries; and then she was suddenly inspired again with an uncontrollable desire for the sea. That afternoon she sent one of her damsels to find Courtoise. He came to her room breathless, and eager to learn her will; and to him, without delay, she made known her imperative wish to be upon the sea.

Courtoise found himself in a dilemma. He knew that there was a boat at her disposal, for he and Laure and Alixe had now been sailing every day for a fortnight. He believed Lenore to be aware of this, though as a matter of fact she was not; nevertheless he at first refused her request point-blank. After that, because she wept, he temporized. Finally, in despair, he went and consulted madame, who was horrified at the idea. Lenore still insisted, appealed to every one in the Castle, from Alixe and Laure to the very scullions. Finding herself repulsed on every hand and powerless to act of her own accord, she became, all at once, utterly irresponsible, and made a scene that threatened to end everything with her. Half unbalanced by months of illness and lonely brooding, and tortured by this morbid and unreasonable fancy, she wept and screamed and raved, and threw herself about her bed, till she was in a state of complete exhaustion, and every one in the Castle awaited the result of her paroxysm with unconcealed distress.

After this time she did not leave her bed. She was very weak, and she seemed to have lost all ambition and all desire to move or even to speak. Her days she spent in silent moodiness, her nights in tossing feverishly about the bed. She seemed to take no notice of the little attentions so tenderly showered upon her by every one; except that she was pleased to see the little spring flowers, tender pink bells and anemones, that David and Courtoise spent hours in gathering at the edge of the forest on the St. Nazaire road. Upon these she smiled, and for many days kept a bouquet of them at her side, carrying them often to her lips. But after a little while she grew impatient of these simple flowers, and began to plead for violets, which no one in the world could find in Brittany before May. Courtoise brooded for two days over his inability to supply her want, and every one condoled her. Indeed, her own condition was not more pathetic than that of the Castle household in their eagerness for her welfare and her happiness, and for the welfare of that other precious soul that was in her keeping. Madame prayed night and morning for the heir of Le Crépuscule. Laure sewed for him, talked of him, dreamed of him, and bitterly envied Lenore. And now there was no whisper in the Castle that was not understood to pertain to “the little lord.”