Bertrand of Brittany. Warwick Deeping

It was no mirror of Venus as far as Bertrand was concerned, and the water would serve him better for a morning wash than for the recording of snub noses and a stubble of coarse black hair. Bertrand, kneeling on the steps, plunged his head into the pool and sluiced the water over his neck and arms. The fish went darting into the depths, unused to such desecration and to such troublings of the public peace.

      Bertrand was shaking the water from his eyes and running his fingers through his hair when he heard a merry laugh coming from the direction of the house. The shutters of the bower-window had been pushed open, and a brown head was catching the morning sunlight above the trees. It was Tiphaïne herself, sleek and fresh as a ripe peach, her eyes sparkling with delight and mischief.

      “Bertrand! Bertrand! is that you?”

      Bertrand was mopping his face with a corner of his surcoat. He put his wet hair back from his forehead and went and stood under the window, laughing.

      “I was frightening the fish with my face,” he said.

      “Hist!”

      The child gestured to him from above.

      “Madame is still asleep. I crept out of the truckle-bed and dressed. Bertrand, do you think I could jump out of the window?”

      The lad was blushing a little, and showing his teeth in a broad smile. He darted away amid the apple-trees, and came back carrying a rough ladder that was kept slung against the garden wall. Planting it, he climbed up till he was on a level with the window.

      “What mischief, Bertrand!”

      The lad smiled because Tiphaïne was smiling.

      “Can you carry me down?”

      “Try me,” he said, as though he would have carried Goliath into Gath.

      In a moment she was on the sill, and holding out her hands to Bertrand with a confidence that thrilled even the rough lad’s heart. He took her in his arms, holding her very sacredly, and so carried her down the ladder. Tiphaïne’s face was turned to his, and she was smiling at him out of her wonderful eyes—eyes that seemed to make him live anew. He set her down upon the grass, though one long strand of her hair still lay upon his shoulder.

      “How strong you are, Bertrand!”

      “Am I?” And he blushed and chuckled sheepishly, flattered by this maid of seven.

      “Yes, and you are gentle, too. How can they call you clumsy! What a lovely morning! See how the white clouds glisten! I should like a ride in the meadows, Bertrand.”

      It was as though her word were law with the lad. He bade her sit down on a bench by the fish-pond, and, running into the stable, he saddled and bridled her palfrey with his own hands. Then, blundering into the kitchen quarters, he found the pantler polishing wooden platters in his den. The man glanced up as Bertrand darkened the doorway, and, paying no heed to him, went on with his work.

      “Jehan, the key of the wardrobe. Quick!”

      Jehan stared.

      “What may you want?” he asked, indifferently, not troubling to be courteous.

      “Want, you monkey! Comfits and fruit for the Lady Tiphaïne. Quick with you, or I’ll break one of your own platters over your head!”

      The pantler still demurred, but, being a little man, he surrendered when Bertrand caught him by the girdle.

      “Go your ways, Messire Bertrand,” he said. “Take the key, but your father shall hear of it. I am an honest servant, St. Padarn’s bones upon it.”

      “St. Padarn be ducked!” quoth the thief, taking the key, and leaving the pantler to his platters.

      In a few minutes he had flung the key into the kitchen, and was back in the garden pouring his spoil into Tiphaïne’s lap. Sweetmeats, comfits, sugared fruit, they made a brave show in the hollow of the child’s tunic.

      “Oh, Bertrand!” And she began to store them deliberately in her kerchief pouch, yet giving him some for his own delectation.

      “I have saddled the palfrey,” he said, thrusting a sugar-plum into his capacious mouth.

      “Bertrand, I love sweetmeats.”

      Bertrand chuckled.

      “So does Jehan, the pantler,” he said, licking his lips.

      Away they went across the bridge with the breath of the May morning sweeping over the meadows. Bertrand had lifted Tiphaïne into the saddle, and shouted to Dame Jake, who lay asleep in the court-yard with her nose on her paws. Bertrand ran with his hand on the bridle, looking up into the child’s face, laughing when she laughed, delighted with her delight. Youth was in the air, youth and the joy thereof. Bertrand forgot his ugliness and his shabby clothes as the palfrey cantered along the road with Dame Jake barking and bounding under her nose.

      Away over the meadows with their dew-drenched green and gold stood a clump of old thorn-trees white as driven snow. Tiphaïne pointed to them with a thrill of innocent wonder.

      “See, Bertrand, the great thorns! I should like a white bough to carry into Rennes.”

      Bertrand turned the palfrey into the meadows, and they were soon racing over the wet grass for the thorns. The trees grew in a circle about a great stone cromlech that rose gray as death amid the revelry of spring. There were other stones lying half hidden in the grass, the fallen pillars that the black Iberians had heaved up of old. The gray cromlech seemed to cast a shadow across the face of the morning, as though grim Ankrou still lurked in the woods and wastes.

      Tiphaïne’s face fell a little as the granite rose amid the green.

      “Bertrand, there is a wizard’s table. I hate these old stones; they make me think of ghosts.”

      Bertrand was not an imaginative lad, and somewhat of a sturdy sceptic with regard to many of the Breton superstitions.

      “Our folk call it the Maid’s Gate,” he said, with a twinkle. “On midsummer night the wenches who want husbands run through it at midnight in their shifts. I was here last midsummer.”

      “Oh, Bertrand!”

      “I hid in one of the thorn-trees, and when the silly hussies came sneaking up I set up such a croaking and a growling that they took to their heels and ran like rabbits. Tiphaïne, how I laughed, till I nearly fell right out of the tree! Dom Isidore came up next day with his Mass Book—and a cup of holy-water—and drove the devil out of the stones.”

      Tiphaïne laughed, but there was less joyousness in her laughter than before. The perfume of the thorns drifted on the air, their white knolls rising against the sky’s blue and deepening the green of the long grass. The child sprang down from the saddle, defying the dew, and patted Dame Jake, who came to rub her head against Tiphaïne’s hand.

      Bertrand broke a bough from one of the trees. Tiphaïne had turned to the cromlech, and, seating herself on one of the fallen stones, she stared at it wistfully, as though it had some mystery for her she could not fathom. Bertrand watched her, wondering at the seriousness that so suddenly possessed the child.

      “Bertrand.”

      He stood beside her, holding the white bough in one hand, the palfrey’s bridle in the other.

      “Bertrand, you are coming with us to Rennes?”

      The lad’s face clouded on the instant, and he frowned thoughtfully at the great cromlech.

      “Madame Jeanne does not wish it,” he said. “Olivier has my place.”

      “Olivier!”

      “Yes. You see—they are proud of him, Tiphaïne, but they are ashamed of me.”

      He spoke out bluntly, yet with a bitterness that he could not hide.

      “Bertrand, they are ashamed