Part 35

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?"