Chivalry

admiration and envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as he recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and in consequence be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. 'I shall miss the little huzzy, too,' he thought.

'Heigho!' said Richard, 'I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently is Branwen married to this Gwyllem and grown fat and old, and I am remarried to Dame Isabel of France, and am King of England: and a trifle later all four of us will be dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself.'

Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of the day's happenings. A half-hour since, while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. 'That will I do,' said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen.

Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem's house, and broke in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting silently in a hideous conflict; her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent.

'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:

'The gods in honor of fair Branwen's worth 
Bore gifts to her—and Jove, Olympus' lord, 
Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord, 
And Venus gave her slender body's girth, 
And Mercury the lyre he framed at birth, 
And Mars his jewelled and resistless sword, 
And wrinkled Plutus all the secret hoard 
And immemorial treasure of mid-earth,— 
'And while the puzzled gods were pondering 
Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, 
Dan Cupid came among them carolling 
And proffered unto her a looking-glass, 
Wherein she gazed and saw the goodliest thing 
That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass.' 

'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:

'Catullus might have made of words that seek 
With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways, 
The perfect song, or in the old dead days 
Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; 
But I am not as they—and dare not speak 
Of you unworthily, and dare not praise 
Perfection with imperfect roundelays, 
And desecrate the prize I dare to seek. 
'I do not woo you, then, by fashioning 
Vext similes of you and Guenevere, 
And durst not come with agile lips that bring 
The sugared periods of a sonneteer, 
And bring no more—but just with lips that cling 
To yours, and murmur against them, 'I love you, dear!''

For Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! then here was yet more tinsel