  The dawn was streaming up when Bertrand came down the stairway from the upper room in the tower and paused in the gallery leading to the solar. A bitter watch had it been for Bertrand, a long vigil with the relentless past condemning him with the thoughts of his own heart. He had knelt there, stunned and awed, with Arletta’s blood dyeing the floor and her white face shining on him from amid the dark wreathings of her hair. There had been no horror in her death for him, only a great revulsion of remorse, a moving of all his manhood. He had looked on the dead face hating himself, haunted by memories—memories poignant as a mother’s tears. How good the girl had been to him, even when he had been rough and petulant! She had often gone hungry that he might eat. And now he had killed her—killed her with his great blundering penitence that had trampled on her love in its struggles to be free. He had blood on his hands—the blood of the woman whose bosom had pillowed his head in sleep. Bertrand stood in the gallery, miserable and cold, watching the dawn come up over the thickets of Broceliande. There was no joy for him in that splendor of gold, for the eyes of Arletta would open with the dawn no more. Ah, God, what a brute he had been, what a self-righteous coward! He had taken this woman’s heart, broken it, and thrown it back to her in this awakening of his, of which he had been so proud. Bertrand gripped the window-rail and stared at the moat. A glory of gold was streaming over the forest, and the black water beneath him caught the splendor and seemed glad. The two women, Gwen and Barbe, were washing themselves in the water-butt before the kitchen entry when Bertrand went down into the court. They pulled their clothes up over their breasts on catching sight of him, and stood giggling and looking at each other. “Good-morrow, lording.” “Your servant, Messire Bertrand. Letta’s a proud woman again, I’m thinking—” They burst out laughing, cawing like a couple of crows. “S-s-h, Gwen, be decent!” “Why shouldn’t I have my jest with the captain—” She stopped, open-mouthed, for Bertrand’s white face shocked the insolence out of her. There was something more than fury on it, something more terrible than pain. There was blood, too, on his surcoat. The women shrank from him, holding their loose clothes, awed by the look in Bertrand’s eyes. “Out, you fools!” He pointed to the tower gate, and followed them like some inexorable spirit as they went before him like a couple of sheep. Guicheaux was sleeping on a pile of straw outside the guard-room door. Bertrand shook him, and pointed to Gwen and Barbe as the quipster sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Turn them out!” The women were ready enough to be deprived of Bertrand’s presence, and they scampered across the bridge when Guicheaux swung the gate open. The man watched them, then turned, and, looking curiously at Bertrand, put his lips together as though tempted to whistle. “Shut the gate.” Guicheaux obeyed him, wondering what was to follow. “Arletta is dead.” “Dead, captain!” “She stabbed herself. I am going to bury her. Keep the men out of the place.” He spoke curtly, fiercely, forcing out the words as though each one gave him pain. Guicheaux’s face was a white patch in the shadow—the mouth a black circle, the eyes two dots of light. “Dead, captain!” Bertrand looked as though he would have struck the man. “Yes. The fault was mine. Arletta was jealous; she tried to stab madame, and, when balked, stabbed herself instead.” Guicheaux said nothing. He stood pulling his peaked beard and frowning at the stones. The thing had shocked him, lewd-mouthed ruffian that he was. Bertrand watched him a moment, and then, turning on his heel, went to one of the out-houses where tools were kept. The grass in the garden was crisped with fallen leaves and dusted with dew that twinkled, thousand-eyed, under the sheen of the dawn. All the pungent freshness of autumn was in the air. Bertrand chose his ground—a clean stretch of turf close to the steam of a great apple-tree, and far from the mounds the Black Death had built. He set to work with the look of a man who feels his heart helped by physical effort. Sweat ran from his forehead and his breath steamed up into the air, but he never paused till the grave lay finished. Thrusting the spade into the pile of earth, he went into the court and climbed the tower stair to the room where Arletta lay dead. Bertrand stood and looked at her awhile, dry eyed, moved to the depths, his mouth twitching. Then he lifted her in his arms, feeling the solemn coldness of her body striking to his heart, and carried her down the stair and across the court into the garden. Very tenderly he laid her in the grave, and, kneeling, set her hair in a circle about her face and crossed her hands upon her bosom. Then he stood up and looked at her, the sunlight touching her face, as she lay in her last resting-place, her hands in the shadow that hid the blood-stains on her dress. A foot-fall in the grass and a shadow stealing athwart the band of sunlight brought Bertrand round upon his heel. TiphaÏne had crossed the garden, her red gown sweeping the fallen leaves, her crucifix in her hands, and a few half-faded flowers. Her eyes were full of the sadness of deep thought. “You have laid her there?” He nodded, and stood twisting his hands together. TiphaÏne went close to the grave and looked down at Arletta sleeping her last sleep, with her black hair about her face. How quiet and unhurt she looked, her jealousy dead with her, her hands folded upon her bosom! TiphaÏne knelt down and began to pray, holding her crucifix over the grave. The act brought Bertrand also to his knees by the pile of brown earth he had thrown up out of the trench. He looked at dead Arletta and then at TiphaÏne, whose hair shone like amber in the sun. He saw her lips move, saw her take her breath in deeply, her eyes fixed on Arletta’s face. Bertrand tried to pray also with the groping yet passionate instincts of a soul still half in the dark. He strove after the words that would not come, knowing full well what his heart desired. “Bertrand.” TiphaÏne was looking at him across the grave. Her mouth was soft and lovable, her eyes tremulous with pity. It was to be peace between them. Bertrand’s remorse pleaded for mercy. “Bertrand, the child is asleep; she will know no more pain.” Bertrand hung his head and stared into the grave. “I have killed her,” he said; “yes, there is no escaping it. She was very good to me, poor wench, and I—I was often rough and selfish.” He knelt there, gnawing his lip, twisting his hands into his surcoat, and trying to keep the tears from coming to his eyes. TiphaÏne watched him with a strange, sad smile. She was wondering whether Bertrand would forget. “One cannot change the past,” she said. He flung up his head and looked her in the face. “I have done with the old life. This child’s blood shall make a new man of me.” “Well spoken.” “I mean it. Help me with your prayers.” She held out her hands to him across the grave. “There are brave men needed—yes, and you are brave enough. Take arms for our Breton homes, Bertrand, and help to drive the English into the sea.” They knelt, looking steadfastly into each other’s eyes, no pride between them for the moment. It was then that a sudden thought came to Bertrand. He drew his poniard, and, bending over the grave, cut off a lock of Arletta’s hair. Reddening a little, he held it out to TiphaÏne, his eyes pleading with her like the eyes of a dog. “Here is the poor child’s token. Give me a strand of your hair to bind with it. It is all I ask, and it will help me.” She stood up without a word, let her hair fall from the net that held it, a cloud of gold and bronze about her pale face and over her wine-red dress. Taking Bertrand’s poniard, she cut off a lock and gave it him, content that the threads of gold should be twined with dead Arletta’s tresses. “Take it, Bertrand, and I will pray for you.” Bertrand was binding the black and bronze together, smiling to himself sadly, and thinking of TiphaÏne when she was a child. “I shall not forget,” he said, simply. “Nor I,” she answered, throwing the flowers and crucifix she had brought into Arletta’s grave. And so TiphaÏne left him, and Bertrand turned to end his work. He covered Arletta with dead leaves, and threw in the few flowers he could find in the garden. Then he thrust back the earth very gently into the grave, growing ever sadder as the brown soil hid Arletta’s face from him forever. And that same noontide young Robin Raguenel came riding in with twenty spears bristling at his back and English plunder on his pack-horses. Broceliande had given back TiphaÏne her own at last, after weeks of peril and despair. As for Bertrand, he took young Robin’s thanks in silence, and told the truth rather than play the hypocrite. The lad’s pleading could not hold him. Bertrand saw TiphaÏne alone no more, and, marching his men out, plunged into the deeps of Broceliande.
|
|
