James Cabell - Chivalry

"On guard!" Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard's girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly toward the snarling Welshman, and with either hand seized the thick and hairy throat. What followed was brutal.

For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem's impotent great fists as they beat against the countenance and body of Richard, and the thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard's tunic and tore it many times. Richard uttered no articulate word, and Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and then the fall of something ponderous and limp.

"Come!" Richard said. Through the hut's twilight, glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle, Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in his arms lest Branwen's skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not. In his arms she rode presently, passive, and incuriously content. The horse trod with deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened about them, and innumerable stars awoke.

Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain therefrom. It was a full three minutes before he got the better of his bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen, who was so near his heart....

Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and mushrooms. "Behold a feast!" said Richard. He noted then that she carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine and two cups of oak-bark. She thanked him for last night's performance, and drank a mouthful of wine to his health.

"Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding," said Richard as he ate.

Branwen answered, "I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is ended." And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the happier.

But he only shrugged. "I am the wisest person unhanged, since I comprehend my own folly. And so, I think, was once the minstrel of old time that sang: 'Over wild lands and tumbling seas flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean or some wild denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine alone is the power to make playthings of us all.'"

"Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in similar terms that Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord," she demanded shyly, "how would you sing of love?"

Richard was replete and quite contented with the world. He took up the lute, in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. "In courtesy, thus—"

Sang Richard:

"Three sounds are rarely heard," said Branwen; "and these are the song of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity."

Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade abashed; and presently he sang again.

Sang Richard:

For Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must and should receive as gold. He was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; and curt as lightning came the knowledge that she believed the absolute truth.

Richard had taken just two strides, and toward this fair girl. Branwen stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to him; and his whole life was like a wave, to him, that trembled now at full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of pity. Then the lute snapped between his fingers, and Richard shuddered, and his countenance was the face of a man only.

"There is a task," he said, hoarsely—"it is God's work, I think. But I do not know—I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen," he said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness.

More lately he said: "Go! For I have loved so many women, and, God help me! I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder is God's work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of devils. Child! child!" he cried in agony, "I am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was afraid to concede that anything is serious!"

For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.

"I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or, it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the parting make her sorrowful—or not, at least, too unalterably sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me.

"How should she? I am almost twice her age, an old fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love her—say, as Gwyllem did. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, it is true, but only a half of me loves her; and the other half of me remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc's hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I am a very contemptible creature, the handsome scabbard of a man, precisely as Owain said." This settled, Richard whistled to his dog.