“Little hands clasp muckle gold,
Else it were not worth thy hold.”
E. B. Browning.
The Queen of the Spring was holding her gracious and fragrant revel in a fair valley of Savoy. Orange trees were white with glorious blossom, and the carpet of wild hyacinths beneath them, though splashed here and there with patches of scarlet anemone, “Seemed like the sky up-breaking through the earth.”
High above rose the glittering peaks of the everlasting hills, standing like priests between earth and heaven, in their ephods of untrodden snow.
Quite indifferent to all this beauty seemed the solitary horseman who rode along the bridle-path which traversed the valley. He was a good-looking youth of one or two and twenty, in a handsome riding costume with an embroidered cape, a fashionable hausse col or high collar, and a plumed velvet bonnet, which was further adorned with a golden ornament, oddly resembling a spoon. His features were regular, and would have been pleasant to look on, but for their unmistakable expression of distress and anxiety. No one, certainly, would have guessed from his face that Victor de Lormayeur was riding to the bower of the lady he loved. There are meetings in this world sadder than partings, and this was one of them. Once or twice the young cavalier made an effort to beguile his way with a drinking or a hunting song, but the words presently died on his lips. He relapsed into gloomy silence, broken only by what sounded like muttered curses, upon himself probably, or upon his evil fate.
Emerging at last from the valley, he came in sight of a gloomy, half-ruinous tower or keep, with a few cultivated fields about it. He rode through these, and up to a postern gate, upon which he knocked six times, loud and low alternately.
It was evidently a preconcerted signal. Presently an aged servant opened the door, and saluted him with much respect.
“Will it please my young lord to repose himself in the matted chamber?” he asked. “I go to summon Rose, and to see to your excellency’s horse.”
“Thanks, old friend,” said Victor, removing his bonnet. “How fares it with thy lord?”
“Well as can be looked for, Sir Count, well as can be looked for. But he is old, very. One foot in the grave, as one may say. Ah me, his race is almost run!”
Victor thought his servant not far behind him in that race. But he only said —
“Let one of the boys hold my horse, Pietro; for I cannot stay,” and passed in through the hall to the matted parlor.
He well knew his way about that house, the residence of an old kinsman on his mother’s side. Philibert de Mayne was a broken-down, impoverished noble of Savoy, who had fared so ill in the vicissitudes of those rough times that at the end of a checkered and stormy life there remained to him only his half-ruined castle, and the few poor fields about it. He had, however, one other treasure, the best and dearest of his possessions, his orphaned granddaughter, pretty little Arletta.
It was she, and not the elderly bower-woman Rose, who opened the door of the matted chamber, and glided softly in.
Victor had been sitting at the table, his face buried in his hands. But he would have heard that light step, as he thought then, fathoms deep in his grave. He sprang up and turned towards her, his whole face kindling, but shadowed again the next moment with a look of pain.
As their hands touched each spoke but one word. “Arletta! “ — ” Victor!”
Victor came nearer, as if to embrace her. “No,” she said, drawing back. “That is over. I know all.”
Victor’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. She went on —
“Last week Pietro was at Lormayeur. Nothing is talked of there save the bride from Geneva, through whom you are to win back the broad lands of Castelar.”
“I care not for them! I hate them! I would give them all for one lock of hair from that little head of thine! “Victor broke in passionately. Arletta, hear me! I cannot give you up, and I will not.”
“Hush, Victor! These are idle words, which thou shouldest not speak, and I should not hear. Thou hast no choice.”
“But I have. I can tell my father the Genevan bride may drown in the Genevan lake for me.”
“As you will. Only remember, if you do, it is not the Genevan bride (whom the saints forgive me if I curse), but my poor old grandfather and myself, who may drown, or die by the roadside of cold and hunger.”
“I will take care of you.”
“How? when you are a close prisoner in one of the turrets of Lormayeur, and we are driven from this, the only shelter we have. I know thy father; he is relentless in hate, yet he can slay his hate for his greed’s sake. His greed can he slay for the sake of nothing, in heaven or in hell. No, Victor, all is over for us. We children have had our play-hour, and dreamed our dream together. We are awake now, so we must forget it, and say good-bye.”
“I cannot — I cannot!”
Arletta’s proud lip curled, and her dark eyes flashed. “Cannot? Is that a word for a man?” she said.
“To fight for you I could be a man — a hero. To give you up I am — a very child.” His head went down upon his hands again.
“Then I treat you as the child you are. I do for you what you are too weak to do for yourself. Listen, Sir Count, I give you up. What was between us is as nothing to me now.”
Victor sprang to his feet, and seized both her hands. “Arletta,” he cried, “you never cared as I did! No, no — you did not! Look in my face and tell me!”
She bit her lip till the blood came, one crimson drop on the snow-white tooth. Then she spoke coldly — “M. de Lormayeur, you are hurting me. Let me go, sir.”
Victor dropped her hands, and, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, murmured, “Forgive — beloved! I do you wrong.”
“There is no wrong. Only you must not question me. Nor — make it harder for us both;” with the last words the firm voice shook a little.
“What can it be but hard — bitterly, unsupportably hard?”
“For you there are consolations. And as for me,” she added proudly, “do not think, Sir Count, that I shall pine away, a lovelorn damsel, for you, or for any man. Far otherwise. My place and my welcome await me with the Ursulines of Chambery, all of them damoiselles of good family. There, when my grandfather goes to God, I shall rest in peace; and I shall not forget to pray for you, M. de Lormayeur. Meanwhile your sword is at your side, and the world is before your face. You will fight and conquer”
“And come back desolate, with an empty heart!”
“No “ — but she paused here, for her magnanimity stopped short of wishing him happiness with the Genevan bride. “No — in a man’s life there are many things to fill the heart.”
“There is but one that makes all life for me.”
“So you think to-day. But, Victor, all this is useless, and worse. More anguish for us both. If you are not man enough to end it, I will. One word of your visits here to the count your father, and — not you, but my grandfather and I, would bear the weight of his vengeance. If you come again, that word shall be spoken.”
All this time Rose, the bower-woman, watched and waited outside, trembling for her darling. At last she went away, fetched wine and manchet bread, and brought them in. Victor was standing at the window, his face turned away, Arletta at the table, calm, but white as marble.
The young count must not leave us fasting,” said Rose laying down the silver tray she brought. With a hand that only trembled slightly, Arletta filled one of the tall Venice glasses and brought it to Victor. He raised it to his lips with the words, “Damoiselle, I drink to your health and happiness.” That was the last thing Rose heard as she left the room. What other farewell those two who loved may have taken, neither ever told. Presently Victor came forth with a white face, mounted in silence, gave Pietro a piece of gold, and rode away.
The Savoyard girl had shown herself as heroic as her unknown sister in Geneva. But her soul was cast in a sterner mold than Gabrielle’s. It would not have fared well with the Genevan, if she had been in her rival’s power that day.
Arletta stood waiting until Victor had disappeared. Then she came back to the matted parlor, took up the costly glass he had drunk from, and flung it on the floor, shivering it to fragments. No lips should touch it again after his. But the next moment she knelt, took up one of the fragments, and hid it in her bosom.
Victor, meanwhile, was returning to Lormayeur. He was doomed to bow his neck beneath the yoke, repugnant though it was; and his doom pressed on him every moment more and more inevitably, irresistibly. To resist would have required not courage but heroism, and Victor de Lormayeur was no hero. He was only a brave, not unchivalrous young noble of Savoy. Deprived early of his mother, he had been brought up by a stern, unloving father, and a set of obsequious domestics, who humored his lightest fancy. He owed nothing to his education, save the ability to read and write, after a fashion, and sufficient dexterity in all martial and knightly exercises. He had been taught to hold in the utmost detestation all the Reformed, and especially the Genevese. By his father’s command, he joined the League of the Savoyard nobles against the Protestant city, which was called the League of the Spoon,” hence the emblem worn in bosom or in bonnet.”
This increased the terror and dismay with which he heard his destiny from his father’s lips. To wed a maiden brought up in the heretic city, amongst burghers, roturiers, canaille! What a fate for the heir of Lormayeur!
Yet once more, on his return from his visit to Arletta, he ventured to urge his remonstrances. His father cut them short with scant ceremony.
“Hold thy peace, boy, an” thou hast a grain of sense left in thy stupid head. ‘Tis enough to make a man mad, by all the saints, to hear thee play the fool, with all thy silly objections, while all that time that cur, that villain Santana, has in his grip the broad lands of Castelar, to which that girl is the heir direct! And no other way to get them from him, save to get hold of her. Then, indeed, the duke will do right to her and to us, and we can fling Santana back into the mire he came from.”
“Count and father, why not secure the girl and the lands, and leave me free?”
“Belike and leave her free too to marry Santana, who would be glad enough to clench his title thus — or to go into a convent, and take all to Mother Church. Thank you; I was not born yesterday. The Lady Olive is well worth those beggarly heretics I am buying her with.”
“That I doubt not, my lord. I only doubt if she be worth the sacrifice to me.”
“What sacrifice, you fool? To wed a fair bride? Old Muscaut chanted madrigals in praise of her beauty.”
Victor had not the courage to say with the English poet —
What reek I how fair she be,
So she is not fair to me?”
He could only turn away in silence.
“Stay,” said his father. “These burghers are in a hurry — afraid, no doubt, to lose so good a bargain. They will be ready on the third day. You must go and fetch the girl. Be sure you look your best and gavest. I am sending with you the fairest show of retainers I can muster. Also sumpter mules, with a pavilion for shelter, and good store of refreshment by the way. The weather is fair, and you can bivouac close at hand, so as to come right early to the trysting-place. Thus, one long day’s ride — which ought to be one long day’s pleasure to her — will bring her safely home. And thou art, for the journey, her very humble and devoted cavalier and servant. If thou canst not make good use of such a chance as that, then art thou, of a certainty, even a greater fool than I took thee for.”