Free Monsieur Jonquelle by Melville Davisson Post

woman remaining in the inn. There she was married. Then she was shown to the grand duke’s retainers in a big, smoky hall, loaded with food and drink for a barbarian revel.
    It was the custom for the lord to sit at the head of this barbarian feast and start it on the way on the bridal night. That this custom might be followed she was taken to the bridal chamber by the priest, who acted now as a guardian, andthe key turned in the lock—to wait the coming of her husband.
    The body of the woman rocked; her hands tightened over her face; her voice took the cover of breaks and silences. The vast horror of the scene emerged—the horror of loneliness, of terror, of loathing. The girl stood in the middle of the great chamber, motionless with fear. A huge bed, raised on a dais, surmounted by a gilt crown and hung with curtains of silk, seemed to increase in size as under some hideous magic and crowd her into a corner. Shouts, songs and drunken voices mounted up through the walls to her. Then finally she heard the feet of men on the stair.
    The menace struck her into life. She ran to the window and threw it open, intending to fling herself out. There she saw that the whole wall was covered with vines. She crawled over the stone sill and, clinging to the net of vines, began to descend. Halfway down she heard a great bawling of obscenities and oaths; the drunken noble, flinging back the monks who sought to restrain him, was coming after her over the sill of the window! He came out, one leg at a time, like some huge spider, his big body bulking shapeless in the window.
    He seized the vines as she had done and began to descend; but her own fingers had alreadydragged them loose or his greater weight was too much—for suddenly his body shot past her with a hideous cry, the arms extended like a cross and the straining fingers clutching handfuls of vines.
    She was now at the level of the floor below. There was a ledge here and a balustrade. She dropped on to it, followed it round the face of the château to a terrace and a path that led down into the village. In the road below she found the woman who had come with her, weeping, with a shawl over her head. She received her in her arms.
    A carriage that had been prepared to take this woman out of the country was waiting. The girl got into the carriage with her—and in the confusion they escaped. She did not know how badly the grand duke had been injured, but he had not been killed outright—that much she learned on the way out. Still, he must have been terribly hurt, else he would have taken some measures to intercept her. She did not know where to go; so she had come here—and here she was in all manner of uncertainty. It was only an hour of respite any way she looked. If her husband were alive he would presently seize her as a chattel that he had purchased. Hope lay in no direction that she could see. The very immunity in which she moved for the hour was sinister. She felt thatsomething threatened—prepared itself—was beginning to move toward her.
    Madame Nekludoff rose. The declining sun and the wandering shadows lay soft about her. She stood with her arms hanging and her lips parted, the daughter of some pitiable legend; her eyes big and her face made slender by the memories of peril. I stood up then and said what any man would say, in the courage and in the vehemence of youth. She should go free of these accursed vultures—and I grew white and desperate and hot with the words.
    She looked at me with a sad, adorable smile, like one who would believe in the prowess of her champion against a certain and determined knowledge. But she shook her head.
    â€œMy friend,” she said, “you are fine and noble! You are, in very truth, the fairy prince! But I am not a fairy princess and this man is not a fairy beast. I am the wife of Dimitri Volkonsky!”
    â€œBut if he should die!” I cried.
    Her feet on the hard path did not move, but her