For ten days after Gerault’s departure, Lenore led a disastrous mental existence, which she expressed neither by words nor by deeds. In that time no one in the Castle knew how she was rent and torn with anguish, with yearning that had never been satisfied, and with useless regret for a bygone happiness that had not been happy. The silent progress of her grief led her into dark valleys of despair; yet none dreamed in what depths she wandered. She, the woman chaste and pure, dared not try to comprehend all that went on within her. She dared not picture to herself what it was she really longed for so bitterly. The cataclysms that rent her mind in twain were unholy things, and, had she been normal, she might have refused to acknowledge them. The changes in her life had come upon her with such overwhelming swiftness that she had hitherto had no time for analysis; and now that she found herself with a long leisure in which to think, the chaos of her mind seemed hopeless; she despaired of coming again into understanding with herself.

During all these days Madame Eleanore watched her closely, but to little purpose. The calm outward demeanor of the young woman baffled every suspicion of her inward state. Day after day Lenore sat at work in the whirring, noisy spinning-room, toiling upon her tapestry with a diligence and a persistent silence that defied encroachment. Hour after hour her eyes would rest upon the dim, blue sea; for that sea was the only thing that seemed to possess the power of stilling her inward rebellion. Forgetting how the winds could sometimes drive its sparkling surface into a furious stretch of tumbling waters, she dreamed of making her own spirit as placid and as quiet as the ocean. The thought was inarticulate; but it grew, even in the midst of her inward tumult, till in the end it brought her something of the quiet she so sorely needed.

By day and by night, through every hour, in every place, the figure of her husband was always before her. How unspeakably she wanted him, she herself could not have put into words. She knew well that he had promised to come back—“soon.” But when every hour is replete with hidden anguish, can a day be short? Can ten days be less than an eternity? a possible month of delay less than unutterable?

One little oasis Lenore found for herself in this waste of time. Every day she had been accustomed to pray upon her rosary, which was composed of sixty-two white beads. Now, when she had said her morning prayer, she tied a little red string above the first bead. On the second morning it was moved up over the second bead; and so the sacred chain became a still more sacred calendar. How many times did she halt in her prayers to find the thirtieth bead! and how her heart sank when she saw it still so very far from the little line of red!

At the end of the first week of the Seigneur’s absence, it came to Madame Eleanore with a start that Lenore was growing paler and more wan. Then a suspicion of what the young wife was suffering came to the older woman, and she racked her brains to think of possible diversions for the forlorn girl. A hawking party was arranged, which Madame Eleanore herself led, on her good gray horse. And in this every one discovered with some surprise that Lenore could sit a horse as easily as the young squires, and that she managed her bird as well as any man. Alixe, who had always been the one woman in the Castle to make a practice of riding after the dogs, or with hawk on wrist, was filled with delight to find this unexpected companion for her sports; and she decided that henceforth Lenore should take the place of her old companion, Laure, in her life.

The hawking party accomplished part of its purpose, at least; for Lenore returned from the ride with some color in her face and a sparkle in her eyes. She was obliged, however, to take to her bed shortly after reaching the Castle, prostrated by a fatigue that was not natural. Madame hovered over her anxiously all through the night, though she slept more than in any night of late, and rose next morning at the usual hour, much refreshed. That afternoon, when the work was through, madame saw no harm in her riding out with Alixe for an hour, to give a lesson to two young muÉs that were jessed and belled for the first time. And during this ride the young women made great strides in companionship.

What with new interest in an old pastime thus awakened, and a subject of common delight between her and Alixe, Lenore found the next nine days pass more quickly than the first. On the morning of the thirty-first of the month, however, Lenore had a serious fainting-spell in the spinning-room. She had been at work at her frame for an hour or more, when suddenly it seemed to her that a steel had pierced her heart, and she fell backward in her chair with a cry. The women hurried to her, and after some moments of chafing her hands and temples, and forcing cordials down her throat, she was brought back to consciousness. Her first words were: “Gerault! Gerault!” and then in a still fainter voice: “Save him, Courtoise! He falls!”

Thinking her out of her mind, madame carried her to her bedroom, and, admitting only Alixe with her, quickly undressed the slender body, and laid Lenore in the great bed. Presently she opened her blue eyes, and, looking up into madame’s face, said, in a voice shaking with weakness,—

“It was a dream—a vision—a terrible vision! I saw Gerault—killed! My God!” she put her hands to the sides of her head, in the attitude that a terrified woman will take. “I saw him— Ah! But it is gone, now. It is gone. Tell me ’twas a dream!”

Madame and Alixe soothed her, smoothing the hair back from her brow, patting her hands, and giving her all the comfort that they knew. Presently Lenore was calm again, and asked to rise. Madame, however, forbade this, insisting that she should keep to her bed all day; and through the afternoon either she or Alixe remained in the room, sewing, and talking fitfully with Lenore. The young wife, however, seemed inclined to silence. A shadow of melancholy had stolen upon her, and there was a cold clutch at her heart that she did not understand. Eleanore had her own theory in regard to the illness, and Alixe, whatever she might have noticed, had nothing to say about it.

Next morning, the morning of the first of September, Lenore rose to go about her usual tasks, seeming no worse for the attack of the day before, except that her melancholy continued. Work in the spinning-room that day, however, was cut short on account of the heat, which was more oppressive than it had been at any time during the summer. Though the sky was clear and the sun red and luminous, the air was heavy with moisture; the birds flew close to the ground; spiders were busy spinning heavy webs; worms and insects sought the underside of leaves; and all things pointed to a coming storm. At noon two mendicant monks came to the Castle, asking dinner as alms; and when the meal was over, they did not proceed upon their way. The bright blue of the sky was beginning to be obscured by fragments of gathering cloud, and in the infinite distance could be heard low and portentous murmurs. The sense of oppression and of apprehension that comes with the approach of any disturbance of nature was strong in the Castle. At four in the afternoon, madame had prayers said in the chapel, and there was a short mass for safety during the coming storm. After this service, Lenore, with Alixe and Roland de Bertaux, went out to walk upon the terrace that overlooked the water. The sight before them was impressive. The whole sea, from shore to far horizon, lay gray and glassy, flattened by the weight of air that overhung it, heavy and hot with moisture. The sun was gone, and the heart of the sky palpitated with purple. Flocks of gulls wheeled round the Castle towers, screaming, now and then, with some uneasy dread for their safety. The air grew more and more heavy, till one was obliged to breathe in gasps, and the sweat ran down the body like rain. The moments grew longer and quieter. The whole world seemed to stop moving; and the birds, veering along the cliffs, moved not a feather of their wings.

After that it came. The sky, from zenith to water-line, was cut with a lightning sword, that hissed through the water-logged gray like molten gold. Then followed the cry of pain from the wound,—such a roar as might have come from the throats of all the hell-hounds at once. There was a quick second crash, while at the same instant a fire-ball dropped from heaven into the ocean, curdling the waters where it fell. Then, fury on fury, came the storm,—wind and rain and fiercer flashes, the line of the shower on the sea chased eastward by a toppling mass of rushing foam. With a scream the flock of gulls dashed out into the mist to meet it, and were seen no more; for now the world was black, and everything out of shelter was in a whirling chaos of spray and rain.

Inside the Castle holy candles had been lighted in every room, and beside them were placed manchets of blessed bread, considered to be of great efficacy in warding off lightning-strokes. The two monks, sincerely grateful for their shelter from this outburst, knelt together in the chapel, and called down upon themselves the frightened blessings of the company by praying incessantly, though their voices were inaudible in the tumult of the storm. The wind shrieked around the Castle towers. Flashes of white light, instantly followed by long rolls of thunder, succeeded each other with startling rapidity. And, as a fierce, indeterminate undertone to all other sounds, came the roaring of the sea, which an incoming tide was bringing every minute higher and closer around the base of the cliff below.

An hour went by, and yet another, and instead of diminishing in fury, the wind seemed only to increase. None in the Castle, not madame herself, could remember a summer storm of such duration. Every momentary lull brought after it a still more violent attack, and the longer it lasted, the greater grew the nervousness of the Castle inmates; for to them this meant the anger of God for the sins of His children. The evening meal was eaten amid repeated prayers for mercy and protection; and shortly thereafter, the little company dispersed and crept away to bed,—not because of any hope of sleep, but because there would be a certain comfort in crouching down in a warm shelter and drawing the blankets close overhead. The demoiselles, for the most part, and possibly the squires too, huddled two or three in a room. The monks were lodged together in the servants’ quarters; and of all that castleful, only the women for whom it was kept were unafraid to be alone. Eleanore, Lenore, and Alixe sought each her bed; but of them madame only closed her eyes in sleep.

Lenore found herself terribly restless; and the foreboding in her mind seemed not all the effect of the storm. Her thoughts moved through terrifying shadows. It seemed to her that some great, unknown evil hung over her; but her apprehension was as elusive as it was unreasonable. For some hours she forced herself to keep in bed, tossing and twisting about, but letting no sound escape her. It seemed at last as if the fury of the wind had diminished, though the lightning-flashes continued incessantly, and the whole sky was still alive with muttering thunder. A little after midnight, urged by a restlessness that she was powerless to control, Lenore rose, threw a loose bliault around her, took down the iron lantern that hung, dimly burning, on a hook in a corner of the room, and, lighting her way with this, went out into the silent upper hall of the Castle.

Gray and ghostly enough everything looked, in the dim, flickering lantern-light. There was in the air a smell of pitchy smoke from burnt-out torches, and it seemed to Lenore as if spirits were passing through this mist. Yet she felt no fear of anything in the spirit world. Her heart was full of something else,—a vague, indefinable, more terrible dread, an oppression that she could not reason away. Clad in her voluminous purple mantle, with her hair unbound and flowing over her shoulders, where it sparkled faintly in the lantern-light, she went down the stairs, across the shadowy, pillared spaces of the great lower hall, and so into the long room where Gerault had sat on the day when the herald had come to call him to Rennes. She had a vision of him sitting there at the table, bent upon his manuscript philosophy, never looking up, as again and again she passed the door. It was a ghostly hour for her to be abroad and occupied in such a way; yet she had no thought of present danger. A useless sob choked her as she turned away from this place of sorrowful memories and went to the chapel. Here half a dozen candles on the altar were still burning to the god of the storm; and Lenore, finding comfort in the sight of the cross, knelt before it and offered up a prayer for peace of mind. Then, rising, she moved back again into the hall; and, dreading to return to her lonely room, where the roar of waves and the soughing of the wind round the towers made a din too great for sleep, she sat down on a bench that stood beside a pillar directly opposite the great, locked door. Sitting here, her lantern at her feet, elbow on knee, chin on hand, she fell into a strange reverie. The bitterest of all memories came back to her without bitterness; and she tried to picture to herself that woman of Gerault’s secret heart. What had she been? How had she died? Or was she dead? In what relation had she really stood to Gerault? Was she that cousin of Laval—or some other? These thoughts, which, always before, Lenore had refused to work into definite shape, came to her now and were not repelled. Her musing was deepest when, suddenly, she was startled by the sound of light footsteps in the hall above. Some one came to the staircase; some one came gliding sinuously down. Lenore half rose, and looked up, cold with fear. Then she saw that it was Alixe, and, strangely enough, her fear did not lessen; for never had she seen Alixe like this.

Lenore looked at her long before she was noticed; and the strangeness of the peasant-born’s appearance did not lessen on close examination. She was dressed in garments of pale green. And in these, and in her floating hair, her greenish eyes, her arms, her neck, Lenore fancied that she saw twists and coils and lissome curves and the green and golden fire of innumerable snakes. In the shadowy light everything was indistinct; but there seemed to be a phosphorescent glow about Alixe’s garments that illumined her, till she stood out, the brightest thing in the surrounding darkness. Striving bravely to ward off her sense of creeping fear, Lenore raised her lantern high, and looked at the other, who had now reached the foot of the stairs. Yes—no—was this Alixe? Lenore took two or three frightened steps backward, and instantly Alixe turned toward her.

“Lenore! Thou!” she cried.

“Alixe!” Lenore stared, wondering at herself. Surely she had suffered a hallucination. Alixe was as ever, save that her eyes were a little wider, her skin a little paler, than usual.

“What dost thou here, at this hour, alone, Lenore? Did aught frighten thee?”

“I could not sleep, and so, long since, I rose, to wander about till the noise of the storm should fall. I have sat here for but a moment—thinking. But thou, Alixe,—whither goest thou?”

“I? I also could not sleep. The storm is in my blood. I turned and tossed and strove to lose my thoughts. But they burn forever. Alas! I am seared by them. My eyes refuse to close.”

“What are those thoughts of thine, Alixe? Perchance they were of the same woof as mine.”

“Nay, nay, Lenore! Thou hast no ancient memories of this place.”

“That may be; yet my thoughts were of this place, and of a woman. Tell me, Alixe, hast thou known in thy life one of the same name as mine own: a maid whom—whom my lord knew well, and who hath gone far away?”

“Lenore! Mon Dieu! Who told thee of her?”

“It matters not. I know. Prithee, Alixe, talk to me of her, an thou wouldst still the torture of my soul!”

“What shall I tell thee, madame?” Alixe stared at the young woman with slow, questioning surprise. “Knowest thou of her life here among us?—or wouldst hear of her death?”

“Of all—of her life and death—tell me all!” Lenore drew her mantle close around her, for she was shivering with something that was not cold. She kept her head slightly bent, so that Alixe could not see the working of her face, as the two of them went together to the settle by the pillar.

Lenore sat very still, listening absently to the muffled sound of wind and rain and beating waves, while her mind drank in the narrative that Alixe poured into her ears; and so did the one thing interweave itself with the other in her consciousness, that, in after time, the spirit of the lost Lenore walked forever in her mind amid the terrible grandeur of a mighty storm, lightning crowning her head, her hair and garments dripping with rain and blown about by the increasing wind. An eerie thing it was for these two young and tender women, lightly clad, to sit at this midnight hour in the gray fastnesses of the Twilight Castle, and, while the whirlwind howled without, to turn over in their thoughts the story of a young life so tragically cut off in the midst of its happiness and beauty. Alixe’s changeable eyes shone in the semi-darkness with a phosphorescent gleam, and her voice rose and fell and trembled with emotion as she poured into Lenore’s burning heart the tale of Gerault’s sorrow.

“Five years agone, when I was but a maid of twelve, Seigneur Gerault was of the age of twenty-three. At that time this Castle, I mind me, was a merry place enow. Madame Eleanore had a great train of squires and demoiselles in those days, and thy lord kept a young following of his own—though he held Courtoise ever the favorite. At that time Gerault rode not to tournaments in Rennes, but bided at home with madame, his mother, and Laure, and the young demoiselle Lenore de Laval, niece to madame, a maid as young as thou art now. This maiden had come to CrÉpuscule when she was but a little girl, her own mother being dead, and madame loving her as a daughter. Gerault’s love for her was not that of a brother; yet because of their blood-relationship, there was little talk of their wedding. For all that, they two were ever together in company, and alone as much as madame permitted. They hawked, they hunted, and, above all, they sailed out on the sea. The Seigneur had a sailing-boat, and Madame Eleanore never knew, methinks, how many hours they spent on the waters of the bay. Child as I was, I envied them their happiness; and, though I went with them but seldom, I knew always how long they were together each day; and methinks I understood how precious each moment seemed.

“On this day I am to tell thee of—oh, Mother of God, that it would leave my memory!—I sat alone by the little gate in the wall behind the falconry, weeping because Laure had deserted our game and run to her mother in the Castle. So, while I sat there, wailing like the little fool I was, came the Seigneur and the demoiselle Lenore out by the gate on their way over the moat and to the beach by the steps that still lead thither down the cliff. The demoiselle paused in her going to comfort me, and presently, more, methinks, to tease the Seigneur than for mine own sake, insisted that I go sailing with them in their boat. I can remember how I screamed out with delight at the thought; for I loved to sail better than I loved to eat; and though Gerault somewhat protested, Lenore had her way, and presently we had come down the cliff and were on the beach by the inlet where the boat was kept.

“’Twas the early afternoon of an April day: warm, the sun covered over with a gray mist that was like smoke, and but little wind for our pleasure. Howbeit, as we put off into the full tide, a breath caught our sail and we started out toward an island near the coast, round the north point of the bay, which from here thou canst not see. I lay down in the bottom of the boat, near to the mast, and listened to the gurgling sound of the water as it passed underneath the planks, and later grew drowsy with the rocking. I ween I slept; for I remember naught of that sail till we were suddenly in the midst of a fog so thick that where I lay I could scarce see the figure of my lord sitting in the stern. There was no wind at all, for the sail flapped against the mast; and I was a little frightened with the silence of everything; so I rose and went to the demoiselle Lenore, who laid her hand on my shoulder, and patted me. She and Sieur Gerault were not talking together, for I think both were a little nervous of the fog. All at once, in the midst of the calm, a streak of wind caught us, and the little boat heeled over under it. Gerault caught at the tiller, swearing an oath that was born more from uneasiness than from anger. Reading his mind, Lenore moved a little out of his way, and began to sing. Ah, that voice and its sweetness! I mind it very well—and also her chansonette. Since that day I have not heard it sung, yet the words are fresh in my mind. Dost know it, madame? It beginneth,—

“Ah, I remember it all so terribly! While Lenore sang, there came yet another gust of wind, and in it one of the ropes of the sail went loose, and the Seigneur must go to fix it. I sat between him and his lady, and as he jumped up, he put the tiller against my shoulder, and bade me not move till he came back. Lenore sat no more than four feet from me, on that side of the boat that was low in the wind. While she sang she had been playing with a ring that she had drawn from her finger. Just as monsieur sprang forward to the rope, Lenore dropped this ring, which methinks rolled into the water. I know that she gave a cry and threw herself far over the side and stretched out her hand for something. As she leaned, I followed her movement, and the tiller slipped its place. Ah, madame—madame—I remember not all the horror of the next moment! The boat went far over before a wave. Lenore lost her hold, and was in the water without a sound. The Seigneur, in a rage at me for letting the rudder slip, leaped back, and in an instant righted the boat, I screaming and crying, the while, in my woe. I know not how it was, but it seemed that, till we were started on our way again, Gerault never knew that—that his lady was gone.

“Then what a scene! We turned the boat into the wind, the Seigneur saying not one word, but sitting stiff and still and white as death in the stern. The path of the wind had made a long rift in the fog, and through this we sailed, I calling till my voice was gone, the Seigneur leaning over, straining his eyes into that fathomless mist that walled us in on both sides. After that he drew off his doublet and boots, and would have leaped into the waves, but that I—I, madame—held him from it. I caught him round the arms till we were both forced to the tiller again, and I cried and commanded and shrieked at him till I made him see that his madness would bring no help. I could not guide the boat alone in the storm, nor could he have saved Lenore from the power of the water.

“For hours and hours we sailed the bay. The wind drove the fog before it until the air was clear, and I think that the sight of that waste of tumbling seas was more cruel than the veiling mist from which we ever looked for Lenore to come back to us. Ah, I cannot picture that time to thee—or to myself. At last, madame, we went back to the Castle. We left her there, the glory of our Seigneur’s life, alone with the pitiless sea. It was I that had done it; that I knew in my heart. That I have always known, and shall never forget. Yet Gerault never spoke a word of blame to me. Mayhap he never knew how it came about. For many months thereafter he was as a man crazed; and since that time he hath not been the same. All that long summer he stayed alone in his room, shut away from us all, seeing only Courtoise, who served him, and his mother, who gave him what comfort she could. Twice, too, he asked for me, and treated me with such kindness that it went near to breaking my heart. Ah, then it was that the Castle began to bear out its name! It seems as if none had ever really lived here since that time.

“But Lenore, thou wouldst say. We never saw her again; though ’tis said that many weeks afterwards a woman’s body was cast up on the shore near St. Nazaire, and was burned there by the fisher-folk, as is their custom with those dead at sea. And they say that now, by night, her voice is heard to cry out along the shore near the inlet where Gerault’s boat once lay.

“Many years are passed since these things happened; yet they have not faded from my memory, nor have they from that of my lord. Up to the time of thy coming, madame, he mourned for her always; nor did he abstain from asking forgiveness of Heaven for her end.”

“Ah, Alixe, he hath not yet ceased to mourn for her. Alas! I cannot fill her place for him. He is uncomforted. How sad, how terrible her end, within the very sight of him she loved! Tell me, Alixe, was she very fair?”

“Not, methinks, so fair as thou, madame. Yet she was beautiful to look on, with her dark hair and her pale, clear skin, and her mouth redder than a rose in June. Her eyes were dark—like shadowy stars. And her ways were gentle—gay—tender—anything to fit her mood. Ah! I am wounding thee!”

Poor Lenore’s head was bent a little farther down, and by her shoulders her companion knew that she wept. Alixe would have given much to bring some comfort for the pain she had unintentionally roused. But in the presence of the unhappy wife, she sat uneasy and abashed, powerless to bring solace to that tortured heart.

While the two sat there, in this silence, the storm, which had lulled a little, broke out afresh with such a flash and roar as caused even Alixe to cower back where she was. There was a fierce tumult of new rain and howling wind, and in the midst of it a sudden great clamoring at the Castle door, and the faint sound of a horse neighing outside. Alixe sprang up, and, thinking only of giving shelter to some storm-driven stranger, unbarred the door. As it flew open before the storm, a man was hurled into the room, in a furious gush of water; and when the lantern-light fell upon his haggard face, Lenore gave a cry that was half a sob, and rushed upon him, clasping his arms,—

“Courtoise! Courtoise! How fares my lord?”

Courtoise gazed down upon her, and did not speak. In his face was such a look of suffering as none had ever seen before upon it.

“Courtoise!” she cried again, this time with a new note in her voice. “Courtoise!—my lord!—speak to me! speak—how fares my lord?”

But still, though she clung to him, Courtoise made no reply.