Part 6 (1/2)

”Indeed, yes,” said Adhelmar, when she had questioned him, ”for my breast is quite cloven through.” And when she disarmed him, Melite found a great cut in his chest which had bled so much that it was apparent he must die, whether d'Andreghen and Edward of England would or no.

Melite wept again, and cried, ”Why had you not told me of this?”

”To have you heal me, perchance?” said Adhelmar. ”Ah, love, is hanging, then, so sweet a death that I should choose it, rather than to die very peacefully in your arms? Indeed, I would not live if I might; for I have proven traitor to my King, and it is right that traitors should die; and, chief of all, I know that life can bring me naught more desirable than I have known this night. What need, then, have I to live?”

Melite bent over him; for as he spoke he had lain back in a tall carven chair by the east window. She was past speech. But now, for a moment, her lips clung to his, and her warm tears fell upon his face. What better death for a lover? thought Adhelmar.

Yet he murmured somewhat. ”Pity, always pity!” he said, wearily. ”I shall never win aught else of you, Melite. For before this you have kissed me, pitying me because you could not love me. And you have kissed me now, pitying me because I may not live.”

But Melite, clasping her arms about his neck, whispered into his ear the meaning of this last kiss, and at the honeyed sound of her whispering his strength came back for a moment, and he strove to rise. The level sunlight through the open window smote full upon his face, which was very glad. Melite was conscious of her n.o.bility in causing him such delight at the last.

”G.o.d, G.o.d!” cried Adhelmar, and he spread out his arms toward the dear, familiar world that was slowly taking form beneath them,--a world now infinitely dear to him; ”all, my G.o.d, have pity and let me live a little longer!”

As Melite, half frightened, drew back from him, he crept out of his chair and fell p.r.o.ne at her feet. Afterward his hands stretched forward toward her, clutching, and then trembled and were still.

Melite stood looking downward, wondering vaguely when she would next know either joy or sorrow again. She was now conscious of no emotion whatever. It seemed to her she ought to be more greatly moved. So the new day found them.

MARCH 2, 1414

”_Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg_?”

_In the chapel at Puysange you may still see the tomb of Adhelmar; but Melite's bones lie otherwhere. ”Her heart was changeable,” as old Nicolas says, justly enough; and so in due time it was comforted.

For Hugues d'Arques--or Hugh Darke, as his name was Anglicized--presently stood high in the favor of King Edward. A fief was granted to Messire Darke, in Norfolk, where Hugues shortly built for himself a residence at Yaxham, and began to look about for a wife: it was not long before he found one.

This befell at Bretigny when, in 1360, the Great Peace was signed between France and England, and Hugues, as one of the English emba.s.sy, came face to face with Reinault and Melite. History does not detail the meeting; but, inasmuch as the Sieur d'Arques and Melite de Puysange were married at Rouen the following October, doubtless it pa.s.sed off pleasantly enough.

The couple had sufficient in common to have qualified them for several decades of mutual toleration. But by ill luck, Melite died in child-birth three years after her marriage. She had borne, in 1361, twin daughters, of whom Adelais died a spinster; the other daughter, Sylvia, circa 1378, figured in an unfortunate love-affair with one of Sir Thomas Mowbray's attendants, but subsequently married Robert Vernon of Winstead. Melite left also a son, Hugh, born in 1363, who succeeded to his father's estate of Yaxham in 1387, in which year Hugues fell at the battle of Radcot Bridge, fighting in behalf of the ill-fated Richard of Bordeaux.

Now we turn to certain happenings in Eastcheap, at the Boar's Head Tavern._

CHAPTER III

_The Episode Called Love-Letters of Falstaff_

I. ”_That Gray Iniquity_”

There was a sound of scuffling within as Sir John Falstaff--much broken since his loss of the King's favor, and now equally decayed in wit and health and reputation--stood fumbling at the door of the Angel room. He was particularly shaky this morning after a night of particularly hard drinking.

But he came into the apartment singing, and, whatever the scuffling had meant, found Bardolph in one corner employed in sorting garments from a clothes-chest, while at the extreme end of the room Mistress Quickly demurely stirred the fire; which winked at the old knight rather knowingly.

”_Then came the bold Sir Caradoc_,” carolled Sir John. ”Ah, mistress, what news?--_And eke Sir Pellinore_.--Did I rage last night, Bardolph?

Was I a Bedlamite?”

”As mine own bruises can testify,” Bardolph a.s.sented. ”Had each one of them a tongue, they would raise a clamor beside which Babel were as an heir weeping for his rich uncle's death; their testimony would qualify you for any mad-house in England. And if their evidence go against the doctor's stomach, the watchman at the corner hath three teeth--or, rather, hath them no longer, since you knocked them out last night--that will, right willingly, aid him to digest it.”

”Three, say you?” asked the knight, rather stiffly lowering his great body into his great chair set ready for him beside the fire. ”I would have my valor in all men's mouths, but not in this fas.h.i.+on, for it is too biting a jest. Three, say you? Well, I am glad it was no worse; I have a tender conscience, and that mad fellow of the north, Hotspur, sits heavily upon it, so that thus this Percy, being slain by my valor, is _per se_ avenged, a plague on him! Three, say you? I would to G.o.d my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is; I would I had 'bated my natural inclination somewhat, and had slain less tall fellows by some threescore. I doubt Agamemnon slept not well o' nights. Three, say you?