Brownings Heroines | Page 7

father and mother; and afterwards she remembered
this, and thought that perhaps if her cousins had guessed that such
sorrow was in her heart, even at her glad moment, they might not have
allowed the thing to happen which did happen.
All eyes were on her, except those of her cousins, which were lowered,
when the moment came for her to stand up and present the victor's
crown.
Shy and proud and glad, she stood up, and as she did so, there stalked
forth Count Gauthier--
". . . And he thundered 'Stay!'
And all stayed. 'Bring no crowns, I
say!'
'Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet
About her! Let her shun the

chaste,
Or lay herself before their feet!
Shall 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."
+ + + + +
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