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The young man now stood silent, his eyes mutely questioning the Sieur d'Arnaye. "Oh, la, la, la!" chirped Sieur Raymond. "Captain, I think you are at liberty to retire." He sipped his wine meditatively, as the men filed out. "Monsieur de Frison," d'Arnaye resumed, when the arras had fallen, "believe me, I grieve to interrupt your very moving and most excellently phrased ballad in this fashion.
He turned. A sudden bird plunged through the twilight without, with a glad cry that pierced like a knife through the stillness which had fallen in the little room. Raoul de Frison faced her, with clenched hands, silent. For that instant she saw him transfigured. But his silence frightened her. There came a piteous catch in her voice. "Fair friend, have you not bidden me be happy?" He sighed.
But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me, pouring out the broth and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind and spoiled my satisfaction.
Robert the Frison, not satisfied with having beaten the king of France and the bishop of Liege, reinstated in 1076 the grandson of Thierry of Holland in the possessions which had been forced from him by the duke of Lower Lorraine, in the name of the emperor and the bishop of Utrecht; so that it was this valiant chieftain, who, above all others, is entitled to the praise of having successfully opposed the system of foreign domination on all the principal points of the country.
Arnoul, the boy, was Count of Flanders, and Richilda, his sorceress-mother, ruled the land in his name. She began to oppress the Flemings; not those of French Flanders, round St. Omer, but those of Flemish Flanders, toward the north. They threatened to send for Robert the Frison to right them. Hereward was perplexed. He was Robert the Frison's friend, and old soldier.
And as he sat and drank his ale, and watched the herd of horses in the fen, he thought himself a happy man, and thanked his Odin and Thor that owing to his princely supplies of horses to Countess Gertrude, Robert the Frison and his Christian Franks had not harried him to the bare walls, as they would probably do ere all was over.
And when they came riding in, the great Marquis at the head of them all, with Robert le Frison on one side of him, and on the other Hereward, looking "as fresh as flowers in May," she looked down on him out of her little lattice in the gable, and loved him, once and for all, with all her heart and soul.
I speak somewhat grossly for a maid, but you love me, I think, and will understand. And I, also, love you, Monsieur de Frison. Yet ah, I am pitiably weak! Love tugs at my heart-strings, bidding me cling to you, and forget these other matters; but I cannot do that, either. I desire very heartily the comfort and splendor and adulation which you cannot give me. I am pitiably weak, Raoul!
Were he not my good lord's brother-in-law, as he is, more's the pity, I would challenge him to fight a l'outrance, with any weapons he might choose." "Heaven protect him in that case," quoth Robert the Frison. "As it is, I will keep the peace. And I will see that my men keep the peace, though there are Scarborough and Bamborough lads among them, who long to cut his throat upon the streets.
Indeed, Monsieur de Frison, I am quite ready to admit that my niece is breaking her heart for you. The point on which I wish to dwell is that she weds Monsieur de Puysange early to-morrow morning." "Uncle," Matthiette cried, as she started to her feet, "such a marriage is a crime! I love Raoul!" "Undoubtedly," purred Sieur Raymond, "you love the lad unboundedly, madly, distractedly!
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