Every one, perhaps, could write his own fairy story; this is mine.

The next day Yvon had a thousand things to show me. The ladies sat in their own room in the morning, and the rest of the castle was our own.

It amazed me, being a great building, and the first of the kind I had seen. Terraces of stone ran about the house, except on the side of the courtyard, and these were set with flowering shrubs in great stone pots, that would take two men to lift. Beyond the terraces the ground fell away in soft banks and hollows to where I heard a brook running through a wood-piece. Inside, the rooms, very lofty and s.p.a.cious, were dark to my eyes, partly from the smallness of the windows, partly from the dark carved wood that was everywhere, on floor and walls and ceilings. I could never be at home, I thought, in such a place; though I never found elsewhere such a fine quality of floor; smooth in the perfect degree, yet not too slippery for firm treading, and springing to the foot in a way that was next to dance music for suggestion. I said as much to Yvon, and he caught the idea flying, as was his way, and ran to bring his sister, bidding me get my fiddle on the instant. We were in a long hall, rather narrow, but with excellent s.p.a.ce for a few couples, let alone one.

Mlle. de Ste. Valerie came running, her hand in her brother's, a little out of breath from his suddenness, and in the prettiest morning dress of blue muslin. I played my best waltz, and the two waltzed. This is one of the brightest pictures in my book, Melody. The young lady had perfect grace of motion, and had been well taught; I knew less about the matter than I do now, but still enough to recognise fine dancing when I saw it; her brother was a partner worthy of her. I have seldom had more pure pleasure in playing dance music, and I should have been willing it had lasted all day; but it was not long before a sour-faced maid came and said my Lady had sent her to say mademoiselle should be at her studies; and she ran away laughing, yet sorry to go, and dropped a little running curtsey at the door, very graceful, such as I have never seen another person make.

The room was darker when she was gone; but Yvon cried to me I must see the armory, and the chapel, and a hundred other sights. I followed him like a child, my eyes very round, I doubt not, and staring with all my might. The armory was another of the long halls or corridors that ran along the sides of the courtyard. Here were weapons of all kinds, but chiefly swords; swords of every possible make and size, some of great beauty, others clumsy enough, that looked as if bears should handle them. I had never held a sword in my hand,--how should I?--but Yvon vowed I must learn to fence, and told some story of an ancestor of mine who was the best swordsman in the country, and kept all comers at bay in some old fight long ago. I took the long bit of springy steel, and found it extraordinary comfortable to the hand. Practice with the fiddle-bow since early childhood gave, I may suppose, strength and quickness to the turn of my wrist; however it was, the marquis cried out that I was born for the sword; and in a few minutes again cried to know who had taught me tricks of fence. Honesty knows, I had had no teaching; only my eye caught his own motions, and my hand and wrist answered instantly, being trained to ready obedience. I felt a singular joy in this exercise, Melody. In grace and dexterity it equals the violin; with this difference, which keeps the two the width of the world apart, that the one breeds trouble and strife, while the other may, under Providence, soothe human ills more than any other one thing, save the kindly sound of the human voice.

Make the best defence I could, it was not long before Yvon sent my foil flying from my hand; but still he professed amazement at my ready mastering of the art, and I felt truly that it was natural to me, and that with a few trials I might do as well as he.

Next I must see the chapel, very ancient, but kept smart with candles and crimson velvet cushions. I could not warm to this, feeling the four plain walls of a meeting-house the only thing that could enclose my religious feelings with any comfort; and these not to compare with a free hillside, or the trees of a wood when the wind moves in them. And then we went to the stables, and the gardens, laid out very stately, and his sister's own rose garden, the pleasantest place in the whole, or so I thought.

So with one thing and another, it was late afternoon before Yvon remembered that I must not sleep again without visiting my own tower, as he would call it; and for this, the young lady had leave to go with us.

It was a short walk, not more than half a mile, and in a few minutes we were looking up at the tower, that seemed older and sadder by day than it had done in the evening dimness. It stood alone. The body of what had been behind and beside it was gone, but we could trace the lines of a large building, the foundations still remaining; and here and there were piles of cut stone, the same stone as that in the tower. Yvon told me that ever since the castle had begun to fall into decay (being long deserted), the country people around had been in the habit of mending their houses, and building them indeed, often, from the stone of the old chateau. He pointed to one cottage and another, standing around at little distance. "They are dogs," he cried, "that have each a bit of the lion's skin. Ah, Jacques! but for my father of blessed memory, thy tower would have gone in the same way. He vowed, when he came of age, that this desecration should go no further. He brought the priest, and together they laid a fine curse upon whoever should move another stone from the ruins, or lay hands on La Tour D'Arthenay. Since then, no man touches this stone. It remains, as you see. It has waited till this day, for thee, its propriety."

He had not quite the right word, Melody, but I had not the heart to correct him, being more moved by the thing than I could show reason for.

Inside the tower there was a stone staircase, that went steeply up one side, or rather the front it was, for from it we could step across to a wide stone shelf that stood out under the round window. It might have been part of a great chimney-piece, such as there still were in Chateau Claire. The ivy had reached in through the empty round, and covered this stone with a thick mat, more black than green. Though ready enough to step on this myself, I could not think it fit for Mlle. de Ste. Valerie, and took the liberty to say so; but she laughed, and told me she had climbed to this perch a hundred times. She was light as a leaf, and when I saw her set her foot in her brother's hand and spring across the empty s.p.a.ce from the stair to the shelf, it seemed no less than if a wind had blown her. Soon we were all three crouching or kneeling on the stone, with our elbows in the curve of the great window, looking out on the prospect. A fair one it was, of fields and vineyards, with streams winding about, but very small. They spoke of rivers, but I saw none. It was the same with the hills, which Yvon bade me see here and there; little risings, that would not check the breath in a running man. For all that, the country was a fine country, and I praised it honestly, though knowing in my heart that it was but a poor patch beside our own.

I was thinking this, when the young lady turned to me, and asked, in her gracious way, would I be coming back, I and my people, to rebuild Chateau D'Arthenay?

"It was the finest in the county, so the old books say!" she told me.

"There was a hall for dancing, a hundred feet long, and once the Sieur D'Arthenay gave a ball for the king, Henri Quatre it was, and the hall was lighted with a thousand tapers of rose-coloured wax, set in silver sconces. How that must have been pretty, M. D'Arthenay!"

I thought of our kitchen at home, and the gla.s.s lamps that Mere-Marie kept shining with such care; but before I could speak, Yvon broke in.

"He shall come! I tell him he shall come, Valerie! All my life I perish, thou knowest it, for a companion of my s.e.x, of my age. Thou art my angel, Valerie, but thou art a woman, and soon, too, thou wilt leave me.

Alone, a hermit in my chateau, my heart desolate, how to support life?

It is for this that I cry to the friend of my house to return to his country, the country of his race; to bring here his respected father, to plant a vineyard, a little corn, a little fruit,--briefly, to live.

Observe!" Instantly his hands fluttered out, pointing here and there.

"Jacques, observe, I implore you! This tower; it is now uninhabited, is it not? you can answer me that, though you have been here but a day."

As he waited for an answer, I replied that it certainly was vacant, so far as I could see; except that there must be bats and owls, I thought, in the thickness of the ivy trees.

"Perfectly! Except for these animals, there is none to dispute your entrance. The tower is solid,--of a solidity! Cannon must be brought, to batter down these walls. Instead of battering, we restore, we construct.

With these brave walls to keep out the cold, you construct within--a dwelling! vast, I do not say; palatial, I do not say; but ample for two persons, who--who have lived together, _a deux_, not requiring separate suites of apartments." He waved his hand in such a manner that I saw long sets of rooms opening one after another, till the eye was lost in them.

"Here, where we now are posed, is your own room, Jacques. For you this view of Paradise. Monsieur your father will not so readily mount the stairs, becoming in future years infirm, though now a tree, an oak, ma.s.sive and erect. We build for the future, D'Arthenay! Below, then, the paternal apartments, the salon, perhaps a small room for guns and dogs and appliances." Another wave set off a square s.p.a.ce, where we could almost see the dogs leaping and crouching.

"Behind again, the kitchens, offices, what you will. A few of these stones transported, erected; gla.s.s, carpets, a fireplace,--the place lives in my eyes, Jacques! Let us return to the chateau, that I set all on paper. You forget that I study architecture, that I am a drawsman, hein? Ten minutes, a sheet of drawing-paper,--pff! Chateau D'Arthenay lives before you, ready for habitation on the instant."

I saw it all, Melody; I saw it all! Sometimes I see it now, in an old man's dream. Now, of course, it is wild and misty as a morning fog curling off the hills; but then, it seemed hardly out of reach for the moment. Listening to my friend's eager voice, and watching his glowing face, there came to life in me more and more strongly the part that answered to him. I also was young; I also had the warm French blood burning in me. In height, in strength, perhaps even in looks, I was not his inferior; he was n.o.ble, and my fathers had stood beside his in battle, hundreds of times.

I felt in a kind of fire, and courted the heat even while it burned me.

I answered Yvon, laughing, and said surely I would have no other architect for my castle. Mlle. de Ste. Valerie joined in, and told me where I should buy carpets, and what flowers I should plant in my garden.

"Roses, M. D'Arthenay!" she cried. "Roses are the best, for the ma.s.ses.

A few gillyflowers I advise, they are so sweet; and plenty of lilies, the white and yellow. Oh! I have a lily with brown stripes, the most beautiful! you shall have a bulb of it; I will start it for you myself, in a stone pot. You must have a little conservatory, too, for winter plants; one cannot live without flowers, even in winter. All winter, when no longer many flowers bloom out-of-doors, though always some, always my hardy roses, then I live half my day in the conservatory. You shall have some of my flowers; oh, yes, I can spare you plenty."

She was so like her brother! There was the same pretty eagerness, the same fire of kindliness and good will, hurrying both along to say they knew not what. I could only thank her; and the very beauty and sweetness of her struck all at once a sadness on my merriment; and I saw for a moment that this was all a fleeting wreath of fog, as I said; yet all the more for that strove to grasp it and hold it fast.

The sun went down behind the low hills, and the young lady cried that she must hasten home; her aunt would be vexed at her for staying so long. Yvon said, his faith, she might be vexed. If Mlle. de Ste. Valerie might not go out with her brother, the head of her house and her natural guardian, he knew not with whom she might go; and muttered under his breath something I did not hear. So we went back to the chateau, and still I was in the bright dream, shutting my eyes when it seemed like to break away from me. The evening was bright and joyous, like the one before. Again we three supped alone, and it seemed this was the custom, the Countess Lalange (it was the name of the aunt) seldom leaving her own salon, save to pa.s.s to her private apartments beyond it. We spent an hour there,--in her salon, that is,--after supper, and I must bring my violin, but not for dance music this time. I played all the sweetest and softest things I knew; and now and then the young lady would clap her hands, when I played one of my mother's songs, and say that her nurse had sung it to her, and how did I learn it, in America? They were the peasant songs, she said, the sweetest in the world. The lady aunt listened patiently, but I think she had no music in her; only once she asked if I had no sacred music; and when I played our psalm-tunes, she thought them not the thing at all. But last of all, when it was time for us to go away, I played lightly, and as well as I knew how to play, my mother's favourite song, that was my own also; and at this, the young girl's head drooped, and her eyes filled with tears. Her mother, too, had sung it! How many other mothers, I ask myself sometimes, how many hearts, sad and joyful, have answered to those notes, the sweetest, the tenderest in the world?

"Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; Jamais je ne t'oublierai!"

CHAPTER IX.

THIS was one day of many, my dear. They came and went, and I thought each one brighter than the last. When I had been a month at Chateau Claire, I could hardly believe it more than a week, so quickly and lightly the time went. The mornings, two children at play; the afternoons, three. I suppose it was because the brother and sister were so strangely like each other, that I grew so soon to feel Mlle. Valerie as my friend; and she, sweet soul, took me at Yvon's word, and thought me, perhaps, a fine fellow, and like her own people. That she never fully learned the difference is one of the many things for which I have to thank a gracious G.o.d.

Abby Rock told me, Melody,--in after-times, when we were much together,--how my poor father, at sight of my mother Marie, was struck with love as by a lightning-flash. It was a possession, she would say, only by an angel instead of an evil spirit; at the first look, she filled his life, and while she lived he wanted nothing else, nor indeed after she died. It was not so with me. And perhaps it might seem strange to some, my dear child, that I write this story of my heart for you, who are still a slip of a growing girl, and far yet from womanhood and the thoughts that come with it. But it may be some years before the paper comes to you, for except my poor father, we are a long-lived race; and I find singular comfort, now that I cannot keep myself exercised as much as formerly, by reason of growing years, in this writing. And I trust to say nothing that you may not with propriety hear, my dear.

When I had been a month at Chateau Claire, then, a new thing began to come slowly upon me. From the first I had felt that this young lady was the fairest and the sweetest creature my eyes had seen; like a drop of morning dew on a rose, nothing less. I dwelt upon the grace of her motions, and the way the colour melted in her cheek, as I would dwell upon the fairest picture; and I listened to her voice because it was sweeter than my violin, or even the note of the hermit-thrush. But slowly I became aware of a change; and instead of merely the pleasure of eye and ear, and the warmth at the heart that comes from true kindliness and friendship, there would fall a trembling on me when she came or went, and a sense of the room being empty when she was not in it. When she was by, I wanted nothing more, or so it seemed, but just the knowledge of it, and did not even need to look at her to see how the light took her hair where it waved above her ear. This I take to have been partly because the feeling that was growing up in me came not from her beauty, or in small part only from that, but rather from my learning the truth and purity and n.o.bleness of her nature; and this knowledge did not require the pleasure of the eyes. I thought no harm of all this; I took the joy as part of all the new world that was so bright about me; if voices spoke low within me, telling of the other life overseas, which was my own, while this was but a fairy dream,--I would not listen, or bade my heart speak louder and drown them. My mind had little, or say rather, my reason had little to do in those days; till it woke with a start, if I may say so, one night. It was a July night, hot and close.

We were all sitting on the stone terrace for coolness, though there was little enough anywhere. I had been playing, and we had all three sung, as we loved to do. There was a song of a maiden who fell asleep by the wayside, and three knights came riding by,--a pretty song it was, and sung in three parts, the treble carrying the air, the tenor high above it, and the ba.s.s making the accompaniment.

"Le premier qui pa.s.sa,-- The first who rode along,-- 'Voila une endormie!' "Behold! a sleeping maid."

"Le deuxieme qui pa.s.sa,-- The next who rode along,-- 'Elle est encore jolie!' "She's fair enough!" he said.

"Le troisieme qui pa.s.sa, The third who rode along,-- 'Elle sera ma mie!' "My sweetheart she shall be!"

"La prit et l'emporta, He's borne her far away, Sur son cheval d'Hongrie." On his steed of Hungary.

I was thinking, I remember, how fine it would be to be a knight on a horse of Hungary (though I am not aware that the horses of that country are finer than elsewhere, except in songs), and to stoop down beside the road and catch up the sleeping maiden,--and I knew how she would be looking as she slept,--and ride away with her no one could tell where, into some land of gold and flowers.

I was thinking this in a cloudy sort of way, while Yvon had run into the house to bring something,--some piece of music that I must study, out of the stores of ancient music they had. There was a small table standing on the terrace, near where we were sitting, and on it a silver candlestick, with candles lighted.

Mlle. Valerie was standing near this, and I again near her, both admiring the moon, which was extraordinary bright and clear in a light blue sky. The light flooded the terrace so, I think we both forgot the poor little candles, with their dull yellow gleam. However it was, the young lady stepped back a pace, and her muslin cape, very light, and fluttering with ruffles and lace, was in the candle, and ablaze in a moment. I heard her cry, and saw the flame spring up around her; but it was only a breath before I had the thing torn off, and was crushing it together in my hands, and next trampling it under foot, treading out the sparks, till it was naught but black tinder. A pretty cape it was, and a sin to see it so destroyed. But I was not thinking of the cape then. I had only eyes for the young lady herself; and when I saw her untouched, save for the end of her curls singed, but pale and frightened, and crying out that I was killed, there came a mist, it seemed, before my face, and I dropped on the stone rail, and laughed.

"You are not burned, mademoiselle?"

"I? no, sir! I am not touched; but you--you? oh, your hands! You took it in your hands, and they are destroyed! What shall I do?" Before I could move she had caught my two hands in hers, and turned the palms up.

Indeed, they were only scorched, not burned deep, though they stung smartly enough; but black they were, and the skin beginning to puff into blisters. But now came the tap of a stick on the stone, and Mme. de Lalange came hobbling out. "What is this?" she cried, seeing me standing so, pale, it may be, with the young lady holding my blackened hands still in hers.

"What is the meaning of this scene?"

"Its meaning?" cried Mlle. Valerie; and it was Yvon's self that flashed upon her aunt.

"The meaning is that this gentleman has saved my life. Yes, my aunt!

Look as you please; if he had not been here, and a hero,--a _hero_,--I should be devoured by the flames. Look!" and she pointed to the fragments of muslin, which were floating off in black rags. "He caught it from me, when I was in flames. He crushed it in his hands,--these poor hands, which are destroyed, I tell you, with pain. What shall we do,--what can we ever do, to thank him?"

The old lady looked from one to the other; her face was grim enough, but her words were courteous.

"We are grateful, indeed, to monsieur!" she said. "The only thing we can do for him, my niece, is to bind his hands with soothing ointment; I will attend to this matter myself. You are agitated, Valerie, and I advise you to go to your own room, and let Felice bring you a potion. If M. D'Arthenay will follow me into my salon, I will see to these injured hands."

How a cold touch can take the colour out of life. An instant before I was a hero, not in my own eyes, but surely in those tender blue ones that now shone through angry tears, and--I knew not what sweet folly was springing up in me while she held my hands in hers. Now, I was only a young man with dirty and blackened fingers, standing in a constrained position, and, I make no doubt, looking a great fool. The young lady vanished, and I followed madame into the little room. I am bound to say that she treated my scorched hands with perfect skill.

When Yvon came rushing in a few minutes later,--he had heard the story from his sister, and was for falling on my neck, and calling me his brother, the saviour of his cherished sister,--I know not what wild nonsense,--Mme. de Lalange cut his expressions short. "M. le Marquis,"

she said, and she put a curious emphasis on the t.i.tle, I thought; "M. le Marquis, it will be well, believe me, for you to leave this gentleman with me for a short time. He has suffered a shock, more violent than he yet realises. His hands are painfully burned, yet I hope to relieve his sufferings in a few minutes. I suggest that you retire to your own apartments, where M. D'Arthenay will join you, say in half an hour."