Brownings Heroines | Page 7

she whose body I embraced?A night long, queen it in the day??For Honour's sake no crowns, I say!'"

Some years afterwards she told the story of that birthday to a dear friend, and when she came to Count Gauthier's accusation, she had to stop speaking for an instant, because her voice was choked with tears.
Her friend asked her what she had answered, and she replied--
"I? What I answered? As I live?I never fancied such a thing?As answer possible to give;"
--for just as the body is struck dumb, as it were, when some monstrous engine of torture is directed upon it, so was her soul for one moment.
But only for one moment. For instantly another knight strode out--Count Gismond. She had never seen him face to face before, but now, so beholding him, she knew that she was saved. He walked up to Gauthier and gave him the lie in his throat, then struck him on the mouth with the back of a hand, so that the blood flowed from it--
". . . North, South,?East, West, I looked. The lie was dead?And damned, and truth stood up instead."
Recalling it now, with her friend Adela, she mused a moment; then said how her gladdest memory of that hour was that never for an instant had she felt any doubt of the event.
"God took that on him--I was bid?Watch Gismond for my part: I did.
Did I not watch him while he let?His armourer just brace his greaves,?Rivet his hauberk, on the fret?The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves?No least stamp out, nor how anon?He pulled his ringing gauntlets on."
Before the trumpet's peal had died, the false knight lay, "prone as his lie," upon the ground; and Gismond flew at him, and drove his sword into the breast--
"Cleaving till out the truth he clove.
Which done, he dragged him to my feet?And said 'Here die, but end thy breath?In full confession, lest thou fleet?From my first, to God's second death!?Say, hast thou lied?' And, 'I have lied?To God and her,' he said, and died."
Then Gismond knelt and said to her words which even to this dear friend she could not repeat. She sank on his breast--
"Over my head his arm he flung?Against the world . . ."
--and then and there the two walked forth, amid the shouting multitude, never more to return. "And so they were married, and lived happy ever after."
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Gaiety, courage, trust: in this nameless Browning heroine we find the characteristic marks. On that birthday morning, almost her greatest joy was in the sense of her cousins' love--
"I thought they loved me, did me grace?To please themselves; 'twas all their deed"
--and never a thought of their jealousy had entered her mind. Both were beautiful--
". . . Each a queen?By virtue of her brow and breast;?Not needing to be crowned, I mean,?As I do. E'en when I was dressed,?Had either of them spoke, instead?Of glancing sideways with still head!
But no: they let me laugh and sing?My birthday-song quite through . . ."
and so, all trust and gaiety, she had gone down arm-in-arm with them, and taken her state on the "foolish throne," while everybody applauded her. Then had come the moment when Gauthier stalked forth; and from the older mind, now pondering on that infamy, a flash of bitter scorn darts forth--
"Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,?Chose time and place and company?To suit it . . ."
for with sad experience--"knowledge of the world"--to aid her, she can see that the whole must have been pre-concerted--
"And doubtlessly ere he could draw?All points to one, he must have schemed!"

Her trust in the swiftly emerging champion and lover is comprehensible to us of a later day--that, and the joy she feels in watching him impatiently submit to be armed. Even so might one of us watch and listen to and keep for ever in memory the stamp of the foot, the sound of the "ringing gauntlets"--reproduced as that must be for modern maids in some less heartening music! But, as the tale proceeds, we lose our sense of sisterhood; we realise that this girl belongs to a different age. When Gauthier's breast is torn open, when he is dragged to her feet to die, she knows not any shrinking nor compassion--can apprehend each word in the dialogue between slayer and slain--can, over the bleeding body, receive the avowal of his love who but now has killed his fellow-man like a dog--and, gathered to Gismond's breast, can, unmoved by all repulsion, feel herself smeared by the dripping sword that hangs beside him. . . . All this we women of a later day have "resigned"--and I know not if that word be the right one or the wrong; so many lessons have we conned since Gismond fought for a slandered maiden.