Читать книгу The High Place - James Branch Cabell - Страница 7

IV

Economics of an Old Race

FLORIAN rode alone, spruce and staid in a travelling suit of bottle-green and silver, riding upon a tall white horse, riding toward Storisende, where his betrothed awaited him, and where the wedding supper was already in preparation. He went by the longer route, so that he might put up a prayer, for the success of his new venture into matrimony, at the church of Holy Hoprig. Nobody was better known nor more welcome at this venerable shrine than was Florian, for the Duke of Puysange had spared nothing to evince his respect for the fame and the favourable opinion of his patron saint. Whether in the shape of candles or a handsome window, or a new chapel or an acre or two of meadow land, Florian was always giving for the greater glory of that bright intercessor who in heaven, Florian assumed, was tactfully suggesting that such generosity should not be overlooked. So it was that Florian kept his accounts balanced, his future of a guaranteeable pleasantness, and his conscience clear.

Having prayed for the success of this new marriage and for the soul of Gian Paolo, and having confessed to all the last month’s irregularities, Florian went eastward. He passed Amneran and a spur of the great forest, now that he went to ford the Duardenez. As he neared Acaire he thought, idly, and with small shrugs, of a boy’s adventuring to the sleeping princess in the midst of these woods, and of the beauty which he had not ever forgotten utterly: and his heart was troubled with that worshipful and hopeless longing which any thinking about this Melior would always evoke in Florian, because he knew that his “dream,” as people would call it, was a far more true and vital thing than Florian’s daily living.

Then on a sudden he reined up his horse, and Florian waited there, looking down upon the dark woman who had come out of this not over-wholesome forest. Florian did not speak for some while, but he smiled, and he shook his head in a sort of humorous disapprobation.

This woman was his half-sister, whom Florian’s father had begotten, with the co-operation of the bailiff of Ranec’s daughter, some while before middle age and the coming into extreme fashion of continence had made such escapades criticizable. Marie-Claire Cazaio was thus of an age with Florian, being his senior by only three months. In their shared youth these two had not been strangers, for the old Duke had handsomely recognized his responsibility for this daughter, and had kept Marie-Claire about his household until the girl had outraged propriety by bearing an illegitimate child. After this the Duke had no choice except to turn her out of doors. She had since then taken up with companions whose repute was not even dubious: and her manner of living was esteemed intemperate by the most broad-minded persons in Poictesme, where sorcery was treated with all reasonable indulgence.

“My dear,” said Florian, at last, still shaking his head, “I must tell you, however little good it does, that there was another deputation of peasants and declamatory grocers at me, only last week, to have you seized and burned. You are too careless, Marie-Claire, about offending against the notions of your neighbours. You should persuade your unearthly lovers to curb their ardours until after dark. You should at least induce them not to pass over Amneran in such shapes as frighten your neighbours in the twilight, and so provoke their very natural desire to burn you at broad noon.”

“These little peasants will not burn me yet,” she answered. “My term is not yet run out.” You saw that Marie-Claire was thinking of quite other matters. She said, “So, they tell me, you are to marry again?”

She had lifted to him now that half-pensive, half-blind staring which he uneasily recognized. Florian had always under this woman’s gaze the illogical feeling that, where he was, Marie-Claire saw some one else, or, to be exact, saw some one a slight distance behind him. Her eyes could not be black, Florian knew that nobody’s eyes were really black. But this woman’s small eyes were very dark, they had such extraordinarily thick lashes upon both upper and lower lids, that these little eyes most certainly seemed blobs of infernal ink. There was in his sister’s eyes a discomfort able knowingness. Puysange looked at Puysange.

He answered quietly, “Yes, Mademoiselle de Nérac is now about to make me the happiest of men.”

“Unhappy child! for she too is flesh and blood.”

“And what does that anatomical truism signify when it is so cryptically uttered, Marie-Claire?”

“It means that you and I are not enamoured of flesh and blood.”

Florian did not reply to this in words. But he smiled at his half-sister, for he was really fond of her, even now, and they understood each other excellently.

So he stayed silent, still looking at her. By and by he said: “You come out of a wood that is not often visited by abbots and cherubim, and you carry a sieve and shears. Who is yonder?”

Marie-Claire replied, “How should I know the real name of the adversary of all the gods of men?”

“Pardieu!” said Florian, “so it is company of such sinister grandeur that you entertain nowadays. You progress, my sister, toward a truly notable damnation.”

“In these parts, to be sure, they call him Janicot——”

“Yes, I know,” said Florian, “and, certainly, his local name does not matter in the least.” Florian smiled benevolently, and said, “Good luck to you, my dear!”

Then he rode on, into the pathway from which Marie-Claire had just emerged. He was interested, for it might well be rather amusing to overtake this whispered-about Janicot in the midst of his sombre work: but, even so, the thoughts of Florian were not wholly given over to Janicot, or to Marie-Claire either. Instead, he was still thinking of the sleeping woman’s face which he had not ever forgotten utterly: and this dark sullen sister of his—who had once been so pretty too, he recollected—and all her injudicious traffic seemed, somehow, rather futile.

No, he reflected, Marie-Claire was not pretty now. Her neck remained wonderful: it was still the only woman’s neck familiar to Florian that really justified comparison with a swan’s neck by its unusual length and roundness and flexibility. But her head was too small for that superb neck: she had taken on the dusky pallor of a Puysange: she was, in fine, thirty-five, and looked rather older. It showed you what irregular and sorcerous living might lead to. Florian at thirty-five looked—at most, he estimated,—twenty-eight. Yes: it was much more sensible to adhere to precedent and to keep all one’s accounts in order, through St. Hoprig’s loving care, and to retain overhead a thrifty balance in one’s favour.