Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
_The Episode Called ”Sweet Adelais”_
1. _Gruntings at Aeaea_
It was on a clear September day that the Marquis of Falmouth set out for France. John of Bedford had summoned him posthaste when Henry V was stricken at Senlis with what bid fair to prove a mortal distemper; for the marquis was Bedford's comrade-in-arms, veteran of Shrewsbury, Agincourt and other martial disputations, and the Duke-Regent suspected that, to hold France in case of the King's death, he would presently need all the help he could muster.
”And I, too, look for warm work,” the marquis conceded to Mistress Adelais Vernon, at parting. ”But, G.o.d willing, my sweet, we shall be wed at Christmas for all that. The Channel is not very wide. At a pinch I might swim it, I think, to come to you.”
He kissed her and rode away with his men. Adelais stared after them, striving to picture her betrothed rivalling Leander in this fas.h.i.+on, and subsequently laughed. The marquis was a great lord and a brave captain, but long past his first youth; his actions went somewhat too deliberately ever to be roused to the high lunacies of the Sestian amorist. So Adelais laughed, but a moment later, recollecting the man's cold desire of her, his iron fervors, Adelais shuddered.
This was in the court-yard at Winstead. Roger Darke of Yaxham, the girl's cousin, standing beside her, noted the gesture, and snarled.
”Think twice of it, Adelais,” said he.
Whereupon Mistress Vernon flushed like a peony. ”I honor him,” she said, with some irrelevance, ”and he loves me.”
Roger scoffed. ”Love, love! O you piece of ice! You gray-stone saint!
What do you know of love?” Master Darke caught both her hands in his.
”Now, by Almighty G.o.d, our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ!” he said, between his teeth, his eyes flaming; ”I, Roger Darke, have offered you undefiled love and you have mocked at it. Ha, Tears of Mary! how I love you! And you mean to marry this man for his t.i.tle! Do you not believe that I love you, Adelais?” he whimpered.
Gently she disengaged herself. This was of a pattern with Roger's behavior any time during the past two years. ”I suppose you do,” Adelais conceded, with the tiniest possible shrug. ”Perhaps that is why I find you so insufferable.”
Afterward Mistress Vernon turned on her heel and left Master Darke. In his fluent invocation of Mahound and Termagaunt and other overseers of the d.a.m.ned he presently touched upon eloquence.
2. _Comes One with Moly_
Adelais came into the walled garden of Winstead, aflame now with autumnal scarlet and gold. She seated herself upon a semicircular marble bench, and laughed for no apparent reason, and contentedly waited what Dame Luck might send.
She was a comely maid, past argument or (as her lovers habitually complained) any adequate description. Circe, Colchian Medea, Viviane du Lac, were their favorite a.n.a.logues; and what old romancers had fabled concerning these ladies they took to be the shadow of which Adelais Vernon was the substance. At times these rhapsodists might have supported their contention with a certain speciousness, such as was apparent to-day, for example, when against the garden's hurly-burly of color, the prodigal blazes of scarlet and saffron and wine-yellow, the girl's green gown glowed like an emerald, and her eyes, too, seemed emeralds, vivid, inscrutable, of a clear verdancy that was quite untinged with either blue or gray. Very black lashes shaded them. The long oval of her face (you might have objected), was of an absolute pallor, rarely quickening to a flush; but her petulant lips burned crimson, and her hair mimicked the dwindling radiance of the autumn sunlight and shamed it. All in all, the aspect of Adelais Vernon was, beyond any questioning, spiced with a sorcerous tang; say, the look of a young witch shrewd at love-potions, but ignorant of their flavor; yet before this the girl's comeliness had stirred men's hearts to madness, and the county boasted of it.
Presently Adelais lifted her small imperious head, and then again she smiled, for out of the depths of the garden, with an embellishment of divers trills and roulades, came a man's voice that carolled blithely.
Sang the voice:
_”Had you lived when earth was new What had bards of old to do Save to sing in praise of you?
”Had you lived in ancient days, Adelais, sweet Adelais, You had all the ancients' praise,-- You whose beauty would have won Canticles of Solomon, Had the sage Judean king Gazed upon this goodliest thing Earth of Heaven's grace hath got.
”Had you gladdened Greece, were not All the nymphs of Greece forgot?
”Had you trod Sicilian ways, Adelais, sweet Adelais_,
”You had pilfered all their praise: Bion and Theocritus Had transmitted unto us Honeyed harmonies to tell Of your beauty's miracle, Delicate, desirable, And their singing skill were bent You-ward tenderly,--content, While the world slipped by, to gaze On the grace of you, and praise Sweet Adelais_.”
Here the song ended, and a man, wheeling about the hedge, paused to regard her with adoring eyes. Adelais looked up at him, incredibly surprised by his coming.
This was the young Sieur d'Arnaye, Hugh Vernon's prisoner, taken at Agincourt seven years earlier and held since then, by the King's command, without ransom; for it was Henry's policy to release none of the important French prisoners. Even on his death-bed he found time to admonish his brother, John of Bedford, that four of these,--Charles d'Orleans and Jehan de Bourbon and Arthur de Rougemont and Fulke d'Arnaye,--should never be set at liberty. ”Lest,” as the King said, with a savor of prophecy, ”more fire be kindled in one day than all your endeavors can quench in three.”