Part 4 (1/2)
”Even so, madame.”
”How long will you hold me at a disadvantage?”
”Is ignorance burdensome?”
She imagined of a sudden that the man was smiling behind his beaver.
Being utterly serious herself, she discovered an illogical lack of sympathy in the stranger's humour. Moreover she was striving to spell Gambrevault from the alphabet of word and gesture, and to come to an understanding with the doubts of the moment.
”Messire,” she began.
”Madame,” he retorted.
”Are you mere stone?”
For answer he lapsed into sudden reflection.
”It is five years ago this Junetide,” he said, ”since the King and the Court came to Gilderoy.”
”Gilderoy?”
”You know the town, madame?”
She stared back upon a sudden vision of the past, a past gorgeous with the crimson fires of youth. That Junetide she had worn a new green gown, a silver girdle, a red rose in her hair. There had been jousting in the Gilderoy meadows, much braying of trumpets, much splendour, much pomp of arms. She remembered the scent and colour of it all; the blaze of tissues of gold and green, purple and azure. She remembered the flickering of a thousand pennons in the wind, the fair women thronging the galleries like flowers burdening a bowl. The vision came to her undefiled for the moment, a dream-memory, calm as the first pure pageant of spring.
”And you, messire?” she said, with more colour of face and soul.
”Rode in the King's train.”
”A n.o.ble?”
”Do I bulk for a cook or a falconer?”
”No, no. Yet you remember me?”
”As it were yesterday, walking in the meadows at your father's side--your father, that Rual who carried the banner when the King's men stormed Gaerlent these forty years ago. Not, madame, that I followed that war; I was a ma.s.s of swaddling-clothes puking in a cradle. So we grow old.”
The girl's face had darkened again on the instant. The man in the red cloak saw her eyes grow big of pupil, her lips straightened into a colourless line. She held her head high, and stared into the purple gloom of the woods. Memories were with her. The present had an iron hand upon her heart.
”Time changes many things,” he said, with a discretion that desired to soften the silence; ”we go from cradle to throne in one score years, from life to clay in a moment. Pay no homage to circ.u.mstance. The wave covers the rock, but the granite shows again its glistening poll when the water has fallen. A Hercules can strangle Fate. As for me, I know not whether I have soared in the estimation of heaven; yet I can swear that I have lost much of the vagabond, sinful soul that straddled my shoulders in the past.”
There was a warm ruggedness about the man, a flippant self-knowledge, that touched the girl's fancy. He was either a strong soul, or an utter charlatan, posing as a Diogenes. She preferred the former picture in her heart, and began to question him again with a species of picturesque insolence.
”I presume, messire,” she said, ”that you have some purpose in life.
From my brief dealings with you, I should deem you a very superior footpad. I gather that it is your intention to rob me. I confess that you seem a gentleman at the business.”
The man of the red cloak laughed in his helmet.