Various - "Legend Land, Vol. 1"

Various - "The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasglow Chamber of Commerce Battalion)"

G. A. Henty - "At Agincourt"

Friedrich Hebbel - "Agnes Bernauer"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Forest Lovers

M >> Maurice Hewlett >> The Forest Lovers



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THE FOREST LOVERS

A ROMANCE


BY

MAURICE HEWLETT




TO

MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD

WITH

THE AUTHOR'S HOMAGE




CONTENTS

CHAPTERS

I. PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT
II. MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT
III. HOLY THORN AND HOLY CHURCH
IV. DOM GALORS
V. LA DESIROUS
VI. THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE
VII. GALORS ABJURES
VIII. THE SALLY AT DAWN
IX. THE BLOOD-CHASE AND THE LOVE CHASE
X. FOREST ALMS
XI. SANCTUARY
XII. BROKEN SANCTUARY
XIII. HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY
XIV. A RECORDER
XV. THREE AT TORTSENTIER
XVI. BOY AND GIRL
XVII. ROY
XVIII. BOY'S LOVE
XIX. LADY'S LOVE
XX. HOW PROSPER HELD A REVIEW
XXI. HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL
XXII GALORS CONQUAESTOR
XXIII. FALVE THE CHARCOAL-BURNER
XXIV. SECRET THINGS AT HAUTERIVE
XXV. THE ROAD TO GOLTRES
XXVI. GUESS-WORK AT GOLTRES
XXVII. GALORS RIDES HUNTING
XXVIII. MERCY WITH THE BEASTS.
XXIX. WANMEETING CRIES, 'HA! SAINT JAMES!'
XXX. THE CHAINED VIRGIN OF SAINT THORN
XXXI. 'ENTRA PER ME'
XXXII 'BIDE THE TIME'
XXXIII. SALOMON IS DRIVEN HOME
XXXIV. LA DESIREE
XXXV. FOREST LOVE
XXXVI. THE LADY PIETOSA DE BREAUTE




THE FOREST LOVERS


CHAPTER I

PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT


My story will take you into times and spaces alike rude and uncivil.
Blood will be spilt, virgins suffer distresses; the horn will sound
through woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, Beauty and the
Beasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their
proper tools. There should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment.
When you read the word _Explicit_, if you have laboured so far,
you will know something of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel;
the Abbot of Holy Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you
behind the arras); you will have wandered with Isoult and will know
why she was called La Desirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will
understand how a man may fall in love with his own wife. Finally, of
Galors and his affairs, of the great difference there may be between a
Christian and the brutes, of love and hate, grudging and open humour,
faith and works, cloisters and thoughts uncloistered--all in the green
wood--you will know as much as I do if you have cared to follow the
argument. I hope you will not ask me what it all means, or what the
moral of it is. I rank myself with the historian in this business of
tale-telling, and consider that my sole affair is to hunt the argument
dispassionately. Your romancer must be neither a lover of his heroine
nor (as the fashion now sets) of his chief rascal. He must affect a
genial height, that of a jigger of strings; and his attitude should be
that of the Pulpiteer:--Heaven help you, gentlemen, but I know what is
best for you! Leave everything to me.

It is related of Prosper le Gai, that when his brother Malise, Baron
of Starning and Parrox, showed him the door of their father's house,
and showed it with a meaning not to be mistaken, he stuck a sprig of
green holly in his cap. He put on his armour; his horse and sword also
he took: he was for the wilds. Baron Jocelyn's soul, the priests
reported, was with God; his body lay indubitably under a black effigy
in Starning Church. Baron Malise was lord of the fee, with a twisted
face for Prosper whenever they met in the hall: had there been scores
no deeper this was enough. Prosper was a youth to whom life was a very
pretty thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he
must have pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope
for the making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped
him like a church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his
heart leapt to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his
page, had begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was
his master's only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy,"
said he, "what I do I will do alone, nor will I imperil any man's
bread. The bread of my brother Malise may be a trifle over-salt to my
taste, but to you it is better than none at all. Season your tongue,
Roy, enure it. Drink water, dry your eyes, and forget me not."

He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than
the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne,
where he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to
church, nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled
fields on either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble
pace which tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings
sharpest in the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all
the great day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards
the West, following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes,
through the woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of
the Downs, topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam
against the new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of
the harvest: a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of
the sky, he saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his
heart laughed. Prosper was merry.

Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all.
Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a
whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with
the waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the
sea, a mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate
and hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves.
Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their
trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come
out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and
gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed:
who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage
life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts--
why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild
uses she turned her thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very
certain that at twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and
astride a horse, felt also that to grow old without having given
Morgraunt a chance of killing you young would be an insipid
performance. "As soon be a priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood,
one of those flat-polled monks kept there by the Countess Isabel."
Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the West; beyond that--"One thing at a
time," thought he, for he was a wise youth in his way, and held to the
legend round his arms. Seeing that south of him he could now smell the
sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt, he would look no further till
Morgraunt lay below him appeased or subjugate.

A tall and lean youth was Prosper le Gai, fair-haired and sanguine,
square-built and square-chinned. He smiled at you; you saw two capital
rows of white teeth, two humorous blue eyes; you would think, what a
sweet-tempered lad! So in the main he was; but you would find out that
he could be dangerous, and that (curiously) the more dangerous he was,
the sweeter his temper seemed to be. If you crossed him once, he would
stare; twice, he would laugh; three times, you would swear he was your
humble servant; but before you could cross him again he would have
knocked you down. The next moment he would give you a hand up, and
apologize; after that, so far as he was concerned, you might count him
your friend for life. The fact is, that he was one of those men who,
like kings, require a nominal fealty before they can love you with a
whole heart: it is a mere nothing. But somebody, they think, must
lead. Prosper always felt so desperately sure it must be he. That was
apt to lend a frenzy to his stroke and a cool survey to his eye (as
being able to take so much for granted), which made him a good friend
and a nasty enemy.

It also made him, as you will have occasion to see, a born fighter. He
went, indeed, through those years of his life on tiptoe, as it were,
for a fight. He had a light and springing carriage of the head, enough
to set his forelock nodding; his eye roved like a sea-bird's; his lips
often parted company, for his breath was eager. He had a trick of
laughing to himself softly as he went about his business; or else he
sang, as he was now singing. These qualities, little habits,
affectations, whatever you choose to call them, sound immaterial, but
they really point to the one thing that made him remarkable--the
curious blend of opposites in him. He blent benevolence with savagery,
reflectiveness with activity. He could think best when thought and act
might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and
horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about
to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the
flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow
steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he
was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people with a balance of
wit.

He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His
plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen;
over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of
a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times repeated and
intercrossed--_I bide my time_. In his helmet were three red
feathers, on his shield the blazon of his house of Gai--_On a field
sable, a fesse dancettee or_, with a mullet for difference. He
carried no spear; for a man of his light build the sword was the arm.
Thus then, within and without, was Messire Prosper le Gai, youngest
son of old Baron Jocelyn, deceased, riding into the heart of the noon,
pleased with himself and the world, light-minded, singing of the
movement and the road.

Labourers stayed their reaping to listen to him; but there was nothing
for them. He sang of adventure. Girls leaned at cottage doorways to
watch him down the way. There was nothing for them either, for all he
sang of love.

"She who now hath my heart
is so in every part;" etc., etc.

The words came tripping as a learnt lesson; but he had never loved a
girl, and fancied he never would. Women? Petticoats! For him there was
more than one adventure in life. Rather, my lady's chamber was the
last place in which he would have looked for adventure.

On the second day of his journey--in a country barren and stony, yet
with a hint of the leafy wildernesses to come in the ridges spiked
with pines, the cropping of heather here and there, and the ever-
increasing solitude of his way--he was set upon by four foot-pads, who
thought to beat the life out of his body as easily as boys that of a
dog. He asked nothing better than that they should begin; and he asked
so civilly that they very soon did. The fancy of glorious youth
transformed them into knights-at-arms, and their ashen cudgels into
blades. The only pity was that the end came so soon.

His sword dug its first sod, and might have carved four cowards
instead of one; but he was no vampire, so thereafter laid about him
with the flat of the tool. The three survivors claimed quarter.
"Quarter, you rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves
for the purpose." He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in
turn, and dropped them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now,"
said he, "take that languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the
rest of your journey as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus
you will have a prosperous passage. Good day to you."

He slept on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by
noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods. The country was
split into bleak ravines, a pell-mell of rocks and boulders, and a
sturdy crop of black pines between them. An overgrowth of brambles and
briony ran riot over all. Prosper rode up a dry river-bed, keeping
steadily west, so far as it would serve him; found himself quagged ere
a dozen painful miles, floundered out as best he might, and by evening
was making good pace over a rolling bit of moorland through which ran
a sandy road. It was the highway from Wanmouth to Market Basing and
the north, if he had known. Ahead of him a solitary wayfarer, a brown
bunch of a friar, from whose hood rose a thin neck and a shag of black
hair round his tonsure--like storm-clouds gathering about a full moon
--struck manfully forward on a pair of bare feet.

"God be with you, brother gentleman," cried the friar, turning a crab-
apple face upwards.

"And with you, my brother, who carry your slippers," Prosper replied.

"Eh, eh, brother! They go softer than steel for a gouty toe."

"Poor gout, Master Friar, I hope, for Saint Francis' peace of mind."

"My gentleman," said the friar, "let me tell you the truth. I am a
poor devil out of Lucca, built for matrimony and the chimney corner,
as Grandfather Adam was before me. Brother Bonaccord of Outremer they
call me in religion, but ill-accord I am in temper, by reason of the
air of this accursed land, and a most tempestuous blood of my own. For
why! I go to the Dominicans of Wanmouth, supplicating that I am new
landed, and have no convent to my name and establishment in the
Church. They take me in. Ha! they do that. Look now. 'A sop of bread
and wine,' I cry, 'for the love of God.' It is a Catholic food, very
comfortable for the stomach. Ha! they give me beer. Beer? Wet death! I
am by now as gouty as a cardinal, and my eye is inflamed. I think of
the Lucchese--those shafts of joy miscalled women--when I should be
thinking of my profession. I am ready as ever to admit two vows, but
Saint Paul himself cannot reconcile me to the third. Beer, my friend,
beer."

"You will do well enough, friar, if you are going the forest road. You
will find no Lucchesan ladies thereabouts."

"I am none so sure, gentleman. There were tales told at the Wanmouth
hostel. Do you know anything of a very holy place in these parts, the
Abbey of Saint Giles of the Thorn? Black monks, my brother; black as
your stallion."

"I think they are white monks," said Prosper, "Bernardines."

"I spoke of the colour of their deeds, young sir," answered Brother
Bonaccord.

"I know as little of them as of any monks in Christendom, friar,"
Prosper said. "But I have seen the Abbot and spoken with him. Richard
Dieudonne is his name, well friended by the Countess."

"He is well friended by many ladies, some of account, and some of none
at all, by what I hear," said the friar, rather dryly for such a
twinkling spirit.

"Ah, with ladies," Prosper put in, "you have me again; for I know less
of them than of monks, save that both have petticoats. Your pardon,
brother."

"Not a bit, not a bit, brother again," replied the friar. "I admit the
hindrance; and could tell you of the advantages if I had the mind. But
as to the ladies, suffer me to predict that you will know more of them
before you have done."

"I think not," said Prosper. Brother Bonaccord began to laugh.

"They will give you no peace yet awhile," said he. "And let me tell
you this, from a man who knows what he is talking about, that if you
think to escape them by neglecting them, you are going the devil's way
to work. If you wish them to let you alone, speak them fair, drop
easily to your knee, be a hand-kisser, a cushion-disposer, a goer on
your toes. They will think you a lover and shrug you away. Never do a
woman a service as if to oblige her; do it as if to oblige yourself.
Then she will believe you her slave. Then you are safe. That is your
game, brother."

"You have studied ladies, friar?"

"Ah, ah! I have indeed. They are a wondrous fair book. I know no
other. Why should I?"

"Oh, why indeed?" Prosper assented. "For my part, I find other studies
more engrossing."

With such talk they went until they reached a little wood, and then
disposed of themselves for the night. When Prosper woke next morning
the good man had gone. He had left a written message to the effect
that, petticoats or none, he had stolen a march on steel, and might be
looked for at Malbank.

"I wonder how much stuff for his mind that student of ladies will win
at Malbank," laughed Prosper to himself, little knowing, indeed.




CHAPTER II

MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT


Leaving the high road on his right hand, Prosper struck over the heath
towards a solemn beech-wood, which he took to be the very threshold of
Morgraunt. As a fact it was no more than an outstretched finger of its
hand, by name Cadnam Thicket. He skirted this place, seeking an entry,
but found nothing to suit him for an hour or more. Then at last he
came to a gap in the sandy bank, and saw that a little mossy ride ran
straight in among the trees. He put his horse at the gap, and was soon
cantering happily through the wood. Thus he came short upon an
adventure. The path ran ahead of him in a tapering vista, but just
where it should meet in a point it broadened out suddenly so as to
make a double bay. The light fell splashing upon this cleared space,
and he saw what he saw.

This was a tall lady, richly dressed in some gauzy purple stuff,
dragging a dead man by the heels, and making a very bad business of
it. She was dainty to view, her hands and arms shone like white
marble; but apart from all this it was clear to Prosper that she
lacked the mere strength for the office she had proposed herself. The
dead man was not very tall, but he was too tall for the lady. The
roughness of the ground, the resistance of the underwood, the
incapacity of the performers, made the procession unseemly.

Prosper, forgetting Brother Bonaccord, quickened his horse to a
gallop, and was soon up with the toiling lady. She stopped when she
heard him coming, stood up to wait for him, quick-breathing and a
little flushed, and never took her eyes off him.

It was clearly a time for discretion: so much she signalled from her
brown eyes, which were watchful, but by no means timid. He remembered
afterwards that they had been apt to fall easily into set stares, and
thus to give her a bold look which seemed to invite you to be bold
also. But though he could not see this now, and though he had no taste
for women, it was certain she was handsome in a profuse way. She had a
broad full bust; her skin, dazzling white at the neck, ran into golden
russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth,
rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson;
of which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back
as to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was
plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of
her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to
the elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems and gold
flashed at him. Prosper, who knew nothing whatever about it, judged
her midway between thirty and forty. Such was the lady; the man he had
no chance of overlooking, for the other had dropped her handkerchief
upon his face before she left him. "Sir," she now said, in a smooth
and distinguishable voice, when Prosper had saluted her, "you may do
me a great service if you will, which is to carry this dead man to his
grave in the wood."

"By the faith I have," Prosper replied, "I will help you all I can.
But when we have buried him you shall tell me how he came by his
death, and how it is that his grave is waiting for him."

"I can tell you that at once," she said quickly; "I have but just dug
it with a mattock I was so lucky as to find by a stopped earth on the
bank yonder. The rest I will gladly acquaint you with by and by. But
first let us be rid of him."

Prosper dismounted and went to take up his burden. First of all,
however, he deliberately removed the handkerchief and looked it in the
face. The dead man lay stiff and staring, with open eyes and a wry
mouth. Hands and face were livid, a light froth had gathered on his
lips. He looked to have suffered horribly--as much in mind as body:
the agony must have bitten deep into him for the final peace of death
never to have come. Now Prosper knew very little of death as yet, save
that he had an idea that he himself would never come to endure it; but
he knew enough to be sure that neither battle nor honour had had any
part here. The man had been well-dressed in brown and tawny velvet,
was probably handsome in a sharp, foreign sort. There was a ring upon
his finger, a torn badge upon his left breast, with traces of a device
in white threads which could not be well made out. Puzzling over it,
Prosper thought to read three white forms on it--water-bougets,
perhaps, or billets--he could not be sure. The whole affair seemed to
him to hold some shameful secret behind: he thought of poison, or the
just visitation of God; but then he thought of the handsome lady, and
was ashamed to see that such a conclusion must involve her in the
mess. Pitying, since he could not judge, he lifted the body in his
arms and followed the lady's lead through the brushwood. At the end of
some two hundred yards or more of battling with the boughs, she
stopped, and pointed to a pit, with a mattock lying on the heaped
earth close by. "There is the grave," she said.

"The grave is a shallow grave," said Prosper.

"It is deeper than he was," quoth the lady. There was a ring in this
rather ugly to hear, as all scorn is out of tune with a dead presence.
You might as well be contemptuous of a baby. But Prosper was no fool,
to think at the wrong time. He laid the body down in the grave, and
busied himself to compose it into some semblance of the rest there
should be in that bed at least. This was hard to be done, since it was
as stiff as a board, and took time. The lady grew impatient, fidgeted
about, walked up and down, could not stand for a moment: but she said
nothing. At last Prosper stood up by the side of the grave, having
done his best.

"I am no priest," says he, "God knows; but I cannot put a man's body
into the earth without in some sort commending his soul. I must do
what I can, and you must pardon an indifferent advocate, as God will."

"If you are advised by me," said the lady, "you will leave that affair
where it is. The man was worthless."

"We cannot measure his worth, madam: we have no tools for that. The
utmost we can do is to bury part of him, and pray for the other part."

"You speak as a priest whom I had thought a soldier," said she with
some asperity. "If you are what you now seem, I will remind you of a
saying which should be familiar--Let the dead bury their dead."

"As I live by bread," Prosper cried out, "I will commend this man's
soul whither it is going."

"Then I will not listen to you, sir," she answered in a pale fume. "I
cannot listen to you."

Prosper grew extremely polite. "Madam, there is surely no need," he
said. "If you cannot you will not. Moreover, I should in any case
address myself elsewhere."

He had folded the dead man's arms over his breast, and shut his eyes.
He had wiped his lips. The thing seemed more at peace. So he crossed
himself and began, _In nomine patris_, etc., and then recited the
_Paternoster_. This almost exhausted his stock, though it did not
satisfy his aspirations. His words burst from him. "O thou pitiful
dead!" he cried out, "go thou where Pity is, in the hope some morsels
may be justly thine. Rest thou there, who wast not restful in thine
end, and quitted not willingly thy tenement; rest thou there till thou
art called. And when thou art called to give an account of thyself and
thine own works, may that which men owe thee be remembered with that
which thou dost owe! _Per Christum dominum_," etc.

He bowed his head, crossed himself very piously; then stood still,
smiling gently upon the man he knew nothing of, save that he had been
young and had lost his race. He did not see the lady; she was,
however, near by, not looking at the man at the grave, but first at
Prosper and then at the ground. Her fingers were twisting and tangling
together, and her bosom, restless as the sea, rose and fell fitfully.
She was pale, save at the lips; like Prosper she smiled, but the smile
was stiff. Prosper set to work with the shovel and soon filled up the
grave. Then he turned to the lady.

"And now, madam, we will talk a little, if you please." He had a cool
and level voice; yet it came upon her as if it could have but one
answer.

She looked at him for some seconds without reply. For his part,
Prosper had kept his eyes fixed equally on her; hers fell first.

She coloured a little as she said-"Very willingly. You have done me a
service for which I am very much in your debt. You shall command me as
you will, and find me ready to recompense you with what I have." She
stopped as if to judge the weight of her words, then went on slowly--
"I know not, indeed, how could I deny you anything."

Prosper could have seen, if he would, the quickened play of her
breath.

"Let us go into the open," said he, "and find my horse. Then you shall
tell me whence you are, and whither I may speed you, and how
safeliest--with other things proper to be known."

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