XXII
REMEMBER THE GREENWOOD
She had scarcely finished the verse when the arras at the side of the window was drawn back, the little door of the turret-stair closed, and Argathona came into the room. She was habited in white, with a silken tunic girdled with a golden belt, and she looked like a noble youth. She entered so quietly that Esclaramonde did not know of her coming till she turned in her pacing of the floor and saw the slender, beautiful figure facing her.
Esclaramonde moved eagerly to the new-comer, with out-stretched hands and eyes bright with cupidity.
"You are welcome," she said, quickly, and indeed she was pleased to greet the radiant youth, but her hottest thought was for the promised toy, and she added, "Give me my gift."
Argathona came a little way down the room, looking steadfastly at the man who lay across the table with his head between his extended arms.
"Is your lord asleep?" she asked, and the duchess made a grimace as she answered:
"He is never my lord, though I be ever his lady. Where is your toy of the gods?"
Argathona was still looking at the recumbent figure, and she questioned again:
"You are sure he is asleep?"
Esclaramonde clasped and unclasped her fine fingers impatiently.
"You tease like a peevish child," she protested. "I blended his drink with such syrups that the trump of Jove would not wake him for an hour to come. Quick, my gift."
Argathona slipped her hand into the pouch that hung from her girdle, and let her fingers rest on the golden apple that lay there. She felt that she trembled as she touched it, and that her heart was beating to a most unfamiliar time. For now she was face to face with her enemy, now or never she must prevail upon her enemy to unspell the spell that had been cast upon her lover. She spoke again, while she still kept the apple hidden.
"You remember the terms of our bargain? If I give you the golden apple you give me your love."
"Yes," Esclaramonde cried, angrily, "yes, fretful. Why do you waste time thus?"
Now Argathona drew out the golden apple from her pouch and showed it in the hollow of her hand. That golden apple was a wonderful toy, for while it had all the shape and semblance of the living fruit, it glowed on the white palm of the dryad as if its precious metal had been steeped in the essential sunlight, in the essential starlight, and forever gave off something of the glory of the sun and stars. The duchess glowed a lively red as she saw the splendid idol, and instinctively, for an instant, shielded with her fingers her eyes against its brightness, while she gave a little animal cry of admiration. But she swiftly lowered her fingers from her face and made a clutch at the marvellous image, but Argathona avoided her, and Argathona's hand shut over the apple.
"What will you tell your lord when he wakes?" she asked, still gazing at young Athens where he lay.
The duchess banged her hands together, and her eyes blazed with frustrated covetousness.
"If you call him my lord again," she cried, "I shall hate you. He is my servant, my slave, my puppet; he shall believe what I please when he wakes. Why, he will not know that he has slept at all, and as for this trinket, how can he know what riches I hold in my treasury at Thebes? Give me my gift, sweet minion."
Argathona looked straight into the face of Esclaramonde, and her eyes were bright and stern.
"Do you love this man?" she asked, and she pointed with the hand that held the desirable apple to where Rainouart lay huddled on the table. Esclaramonde made a face of disdain.
"Love is a word of many meanings. He is a prince and he is rich; he is young and he is comely. He is different from the others I have loved, and for the time he pleases me."
Argathona's face was set and her voice was cold as she spoke again, asking the fateful question,
"How did you come to care for this man?"
The duchess gave a little laugh that brimmed with malicious memories.
"I knew him first a while ago in France, when he was counted a cold monster, and indeed I failed to melt his ice, though I tried my liveliest. Then fate flung him at my feet the other day in the haunted wood."
"And he loved you at once," Argathona asked, "loved you with all his heart and soul?"
Esclaramonde flung back her crowned head and laughed mockingly at her questioner.
"Am I not comely enough to be so loved?" she retorted, and Argathona, seizing sudden chance, bent her head in acquiescence.
"If he love you so well," she sighed, "were it not shame for us to do him wrong? Let us part now in honor, and when he wakes you will rejoice to be worthy of his loyal love."
And Argathona made as if she would go from the room, but she was cunning, and the golden apple gleamed through the net of her fingers. Rage flamed hotly in the eyes and cheeks of Esclaramonde.
"You question like a cold priest," she complained, "when you should clasp like a warm lover. But you can go if you please when you give me the trinket."
And she held out her hand imperiously, but Argathona still kept the apple. Now Esclaramonde was very loath to lose her lover though she professed indifference, and she was firmly determined to gain the apple.
"Nay," said Argathona, craftily, "I am a Greek and give nothing for nothing. But I would your lord were not so single-hearted a lover, for my vows deny me to wrong him."
Esclaramonde clinched her hands so tightly that the nails of her fingers hurt her palms.
"You are a precise fool," she raged; "but you can send your fastidious conscience to sleep. For though my husband loves me now and thinks he never loved other woman, he gave his great heart like a baby to some country girl in the woods."
Argathona held out the globe of gold alluringly, just out of reach of the duchess, while she asked, "Are you sure of this?" and Esclaramonde, her hungry eyes fixed on the apple and her hungry senses fixed upon the youth, answered vehemently:
"Most sure, for in truth it was not I who saved him from the robbers. When I came he was senseless on the grass, and a tall fellow that stood by told me a tale of some forest girl who scared away the thieves, and to whom my love-calf promptly gave his heart. Indeed, when he came to his senses I had much ado to persuade him that this girl was the trick of a fevered dream, and that I was his rescuer, I his promised wife."
The dryad watched her with firm, unchanging eyes. So, long ago, her mother in the woodland might have watched unfearing the dangerous presence of a snake.
"Why did you do this?" Argathona asked. "Did you love him so very dearly?"
The duchess laughed impatiently, for the apple proved harder to win than she had deemed, and the telling of the tale vexed her a little.
"I love very dearly the gift that he can give. Though I be a great lady he makes me a greater. It is much to be Duchess of Thebes to-day; it is more to be Duchess of Athens to-morrow."
There was a little pause, and Argathona's eyes travelled from the duchess to the man at the table and back again.
"Come," cried Esclaramonde, "are you content? Think nothing of him. I will wear him as the rich cloak of my loves."
The duchess was looking eagerly at Argathona, and Argathona, glancing aside, saw that the man at the table stirred and seemed about to move, and she saw that the prince's fingers were gripping the hilt of his dagger.
"I am content," Argathona answered, and tossed the golden apple to Esclaramonde, who caught it in the cup of her joined hands joyously. "Yet I think there were a better gift for you."
"What is that?" Esclaramonde questioned, greedily, and as she spoke the young Prince of Athens sprang to his feet, and came towards her with his drawn dagger in his hand.
"A true blade in your false heart," Rainouart said, and raised his weapon on high.
Esclaramonde fell at his feet and grovelled on the floor, letting the apple roll away. It was as horridly amazing to her that her bridegroom could rise from the cup she had qualified as it would have been horridly amazing if her old spouse had risen from the dead. Both were catastrophes of nature too appalling to understand, and her courage went from her in a breath and her blood was as water. She could do nothing but crouch upon the ground and moan to her master not to kill her.
Rainouart looked down upon her abjection with a sick spirit, and slowly lowered his weapon.
"You have a woman's body that must be pitied," he said, in sorrowful scorn, "but the devil it shelters must be hid. We will find cloisters for you. But you must give me back my ring."
He bent and caught at her up-stretched, appealing hands, and drew from her finger the ring that had been his mother's. He plucked from his finger the ruby that Esclaramonde had set there and cast it at her feet, while he set his own ring in its old place. Then he turned from her sprawling to Argathona, where she stood impassive with folded arms. He was all himself again; the woman's confession had unspelled him; his spirit seemed like a clean mirror waiting to reflect the face of a liberated memory. He would see the face soon, he was sure of it, the face of his beloved, but in the meanwhile there was knightly work to do.
"You are a man," he said. "You have unsealed my soul, but you have snared a woman to her shame. We fought to-day in sport; we fight to-night in earnest."
Argathona moved a pace nearer to the angry prince, looking straight into his eyes.
"Oh, Phœnix of knighthood," she said, smiling, and tenderly reproachful, "where is your fidelity? Think of the greenwood, knight; think of your vows of love, and tell me where is the maid who heard them. Think of your proffered ring, and tell me where it should be now."
Rainouart looked at her in amazement. Though he knew now that he had been deceived, the shadow of that deception still lay heavy upon him and he saw as in a mist. The woman on the ground, freed for the instant from her fear of death, lifted her head unheeded by the others and listened intently with a growing hope in her eyes. But even while she cowered and listened she snatched greedily at her ruby and put it quickly on her finger. The apple lay out of her reach.
"Who are you?" the prince cried, in a great wonder, and let the dagger fall clattering from his hand upon the floor. Argathona came near to him and put her face close to his.
"Look in my eyes, lover, my lover. Though I wear a boy's coat, it covers a girl's heart that was given to you in the greenwood the night you fell among thieves."
She caught both his hands in hers as she spoke and pressed them fondly upon her bosom, and so he was very sure that it was a woman who spoke to him.
"Remember my face," Argathona chanted. "Remember the song of the forest. Remember the greenwood dappled with the moonlight. Remember my face bending over you."
It was to Rainouart as if a curtain had been drawn aside and he looked through an open window on the rose-garden of his dreams.
"I remember the greenwood," he cried; "I remember you. I thank God for my memory. My eyes were sealed so that I could not see, but the spell is lifted from my spirit and my vision is clear. Can you forgive me, my love?"
Argathona looked into his beseeching face with infinite tenderness and infinite love.
"What is there to forgive?" she whispered. "You were snared; you were betrayed; you believed me no more than the sweet-seeming of a dream. But because I was sure that you loved me, who loved you with all my heart, I came to set you free."
"Dear love," said Rainouart, "you are the bravest and the fairest of women, and I worship you with my soul. Your life is mine, my life is yours from now to the end of ends."
"Come from here," wooed Argathona softly; "quit the desecrated city, quit its shameful, shameless citizens. Come to the sweet, clean greenwood, my lover, for there we shall dwell together, free from ache and care, skilled in the secrets of the seasons, the promise of spring, and the gladness of summer, and the rapture of autumn; and the sun shall be our comfort by day, and the stars shall be our torches by night, and the green grass shall be our couch, and the leaves our curtains, and the free air our friend. And when winter comes with its snows and its rains, and its fury of winds, we shall hide in caves or the ruins of temples, and build us fires to warm us, and I will sing you songs of the world before the flight of the gods, and tell you tales of the days of gold. And we shall feed on the fruits of the earth, and all the beasts and birds of the forest shall be our companions, and the glory and the holiness of love shall be our inheritance for all our days."
Now while she spoke it seemed to the charmed senses of Rainouart that his spirit had achieved its best, and that he had passed forever from the mystic rose-garden holding the noble rose to his heart. And the rose of the world was a maiden, and her face was the face of Argathona.
"I will come with you to the greenwood," Rainouart answered, exultant. "Honor and truth and purity and the simple life abide there, and there we shall live and love till our pulses cease to beat. I love you forever."
And Argathona echoed him, radiant, "I love you forever," and she forgot that he was mortal and she immortal, and her face was near to his, and the lips of the lovers met. Them seemed they were already in the greenwood; them seemed they were alone; in their joy they had forgotten Athens; in their joy they had forgotten Esclaramonde.
Slowly the woman on the floor had edged her way nearer and nearer to the pair, and now her fingers closed upon the hilt of the fallen dagger. Argathona, her first kiss taken and given, released herself from her lover's clasp, and holding him by the hand turned and made to lead him towards the turret door. At that moment Esclaramonde gripped the dagger, and, leaping to her feet, sprang forward and stabbed the Prince of Athens in the side. Rainouart, taken unawares, under the impact of the duchess's body flung so fiercely against him, reeled, and, making to turn, tripped and fell towards the table, striking his head against it and dropping thence to the ground. Esclaramonde stooped over him to repeat her stroke, but she had not time. Argathona was upon her, eagle-swift, eagle-fierce, eagle-strong. She plucked the dagger from the duchess's clutch, and flung her across the room to fall in a heap by the door. Then Argathona, paying no more heed to her enemy, bent over Rainouart. He was unconscious from the head stroke; his wound was bleeding freely, and Argathona busied herself to stanch the flow, making little moans over him the while, like a mother over an ailing child. Their second meeting, like their first, was stained with blood. As for Esclaramonde, when she found herself unheeded she crawled to her feet and beat furiously upon the gong.
"Help! help! help!" she cried, and the sound of her screaming voice and the sound of the beaten brass reverberated horridly through the night.