“Say what you will.”
“There is a courage above the mere courage of a man swinging a sword—the courage to suffer, to be patient, and to bide by one’s true self.”
He looked at her steadfastly, and bent his head.
“That is where I failed,” he said, slowly; “I see it now as plainly as I see your face.”
At the chapel door Arletta stood listening, her mouth twisted with jealousy and hate. She had heard all that had passed between the two. The great lady was taking away her one poor pride, her love. And Arletta shivered, gripping her bosom till her nails bruised the skin.
XIV
Jealousy is as the dark under world to the warm day of a woman’s love. It is peopled with phantoms and with shadows—a land of credulity, of whisperings, and of gloom.
Arletta, poor wench, was dwelling on this black sphere of her troubled life. A child of the soil, quick in her passions, hot of blood, she had had no schooling in the higher patience, or learned that world-wise nonchalance that shrugs its bland shoulders at despair. Impulse was law to her, the blind instincts of her body her counsellors, her hands her ministers of justice. She loved Bertrand—loved him with the zeal of a wild thing for its mate. She loved him because he was stronger than other men, because his strength had made him her master. Many a night she had lain awake, smiling over some bold trick of his, the plunder he had taken, the devil-may-care courage dear to the heart of such a woman as Arletta. She had never thought that she was holding him back from nobler things, and that her hands were strangling the ambitions of his manhood. Arletta would have been content to have him the most feared and fearless swashbuckler in all the Breton lands, and she would have taken pride in the rough triumphs of such a life.
Little wonder that she awakened with a start of dread when this white-faced madame with the calm and quiet eyes came sweeping royally across her path. It was as though some saint had stepped down out of a painted window, touched Bertrand on the breast, and disenchanted him with the light of love who had ridden over the moors and through the woodlands at his side. Arletta understood all that Tiphaïne’s influence portended. Her woman’s instinct tore out the truth of her own dethronement. Bertrand would be the gentleman once more, ashamed of a bed of bracken and of a poor quean who had no honor.
Hate found the door of the girl’s heart open, with jealousy beckoning from within. She hated Tiphaïne—hated her with a reasonableness that had its justification in the truth. Who had the silkier skin, the finer clothes, the more sweeping grace, the longer hair? Even in the mere physical rivalry the lady outshone the poor woman of the smithy and the moors. But it was for her birth that Arletta hated Tiphaïne most of all, and for the superiorities that went therewith—the grace, the presence, the clear, quiet voice, the beauty of completeness, the habit of command. Even hatred fed on its own humiliation, and jealousy confessed with bitterness the justice of its cause.