The Forest Lovers
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Maurice Hewlett >> The Forest Lovers
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His instinct when he saw an altar being to say his prayers, he knelt
down then and there, facing the image, yet a little remote from it. A
very soft tread behind him broke in upon his exercises; some one was
coming, whence or how he did not then know. The comer was a young girl
clothed in a white woollen garment, which was bound about her waist
with a green cord; she was bareheaded; on her feet were thick sandals,
bound also with thongs of green. Prosper watched her spread a white
cloth upon the altar-slab, and set a Mass-book upon a stand; he saw
her go and return with two lighted tapers for the sockets, he saw a
silver crucifix shine between them. The girl, when all this business
was done, stepped backwards down the steps, and stood at the foot of
the altar with hands clasped upon her bosom and head bent lowly. "By
the Saints," thought Prosper, "Morgraunt is a holy place, it seems.
There is to be a Mass."
So it was. An old priest came out of the thicket in a vestment of
yellow and gold thread, bearing in his hands the Sacrament under a
green silk veil. The girl knelt down as he passed up the steps; he
began his Mass, but in so low a voice that it hardly touched the
forest peace.
Rabbits came creeping out of bush and bracken, a wood-dove began her
moan, two or three deer stood up. Then Prosper thought--"If the beasts
come to prayers, it behoves me as a Christian man to hear Mass also.
Moreover, it were fitting that adventure should begin in that manner,
to be undertaken in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." He went
forward accordingly, flush with the girl, and knelt down by her. When
it was the time of Communion, both drew nearer and received Christ's
body. Prosper, for his part, did not forget the soul of the dead man,
De Genlis or another, whose body he had buried in Cadnam Wood, but
commended it to God together with the sacrifice of the altar. The
woman came into his mind. "No, by God," thought he; "she is the devil,
or of him; I will never pray for her," which was Prosper all over.
Mass done, he remembered that he had the honour to be uncommonly
hungry. The priest had gone back into the wood, the girl was removing
the altar furniture, and seemed unconscious of his presence; but
Prosper could not afford that.
"My young gentlewoman," he said with a bow, "you will see before you,
if you turn your head, a very hungry man."
"Are you hungry, sir?" she said, looking and smiling at him, "then in
three minutes you shall be filled." Whereupon she went away with her
load, and quickly returned with another more to Prosper's mind. She
gave him bread and hot milk in a great bowl, she gave him a dishful of
wild raspberries, and waited on him herself in the prettiest manner.
Without word said she watered his horse for him; and all the while she
talked to him, but of nothing in the world but the birds and beasts,
the falling of the leaf, and the thousand little haps and chances of
her quiet life. Prosper suited his conversation to her book. He told
her of the white bird's rescue, and she opened her blue eyes in
wonder.
"Why, I dreamed of it last night," she said very solemnly.
"You dreamed of it, Alice?" he echoed. She was called, she had told
him, Alice of the Hermitage.
"Yes, yes. A white bird and two hen-harriers. Ah, and there was more.
You have not yet done all. You have not yet begun!" She was full of
the thing.
"By my faith, I have wrung the necks of the pair of them," said
Prosper. "I know not how they can expect more of me than that."
"Listen," said Alice of the Hermitage, "the bird will be again chased,
again wounded. Morgraunt is full of hawks. You will see her again. My
dream was very precise. You will see her again; but this time the
chase will be long, and achievement only at the peril of your own
honour. But it seems that you shall win in the end what you have
thought to have won already, and the wound in the breast will be
staunched."
"Hum," said Prosper. "Now you shall tell me what I ought to do, how I
ought to begin. For you know the saw--'The sooner begun, the sooner
done.'"
"Oh, sir,". cries she, "you shall ride forward in the name of God,
remembering your manhood and the vows you made when you took up your
arms." She blushed as she spoke, kindling with her thoughts.
"I will do that," said Prosper, kindled in his turn. And so he left
her, and travelled all day towards Malbank Saint Thorn. He lay at
night in the open wood, not far, as he judged, from Spurnt Heath, upon
whose westernmost border ran Wan; there, or near by, he looked to find
the Abbey.
He spent the night at least better than did Dom Galors, whose thoughts
turned equally to Spurnt Heath. That strenuous man had taken the
Abbot's counsel to bed with him, a restless partner. An inordinate
partner also it proved to be, not content to keep the monk awake.
Turning every traffic of his mind to its own advantage, it shook out
the bright pinions of adventure over the dim corridors of Holy Thorn,
and with every pulse of the ordering bell came a reiteration of its
urgency. All night long, through all the task work of the next
morning, the thought was with him--"By means of this woman I may be
free. Free!" he cried. "I may be set up on high through her. Lord of
this land and patron of Holy Thorn; a maker and unmaker of abbots to
whom now I must bow my knees. Is it nothing to be master of a lovely
wife? Ha, is it nothing to rule a broad fee? A small thing to have
abbots kiss my hands? Lord of the earth! is this not worth a broken
vow, which in any case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous,
if I desired you before when you went torn and shamefaced through the
mire, what shall I say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a
crown, Isoult la Desiree!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la
Desiree, la Moult-Desiree, and felt his head spinning.
Matins, Lauds, and Prime, he endured this obsession. The day's round
was filled with the amazing image of a crowned, hollow-eyed, tattered
little drab, the mock and wonder of throngs of witnesses, appreciable
only by himself as a pearl of priceless value. The heiress of
Morgraunt, the young Countess of Hauterive, La Desirous, La Desiree.
Desirable she had been before, but dealing no smarter scald than could
be drowned in the well of love which for him she might have been for
an hour. But now his burn glowed; the Abbot had blown it red. Ambition
was alight; he was the brazier. It danced in him like a leaping flame.
Certainly Prosper slept better on his side of Spurnt Heath.
At dusk the monk could bear himself and his burden of knowledge no
longer. He went to look for Isoult on the heath in a known haunt of
hers. He found her without trouble, sitting below the Abbot's new
gallows. She was a girl, childishly formed, thin as a haggard-hawk,
with a white resentful face, and a pair of startled eyes which, really
grey, had a look of black as the pupil swam over the iris. The rags
which served her for raiment covered her but ill; her legs were bare,
she was without head-covering; all about her face her black hair fell
in shrouds. She sat quite still where she was, with her elbows on her
knees, and chin between her two hands, gazing before her over the
heath. Above her head two thieves, first-fruits of the famous charter,
creaked as they swung in their chains. If Isoult saw Galors coming,
she made no effort to escape him; when her eyes met his her brooding
stare held its spell.
The monk drew near, stood before her, and said--"Isoult la Desirous,
you shall come with me into the quarry, for I have much to say to
you."
"Let it be said here," she replied, without moving. But he answered--
"Nay, you shall come with me into the quarry."
"I am dead tired. Can you not let me be, Dom Galors?"
"I have what will freshen you, Isoult. Come with me."
"If I must, I must."
Then he led her away, and she went tamely enough to the quarry.
There he took her by both her hands, and so held her, waiting till she
should be forced to look up at him. When at last, sick and sullen, she
raised her eyes, he could hardly contain himself. But he did.
"What were you doing by the Abbot's new gallows, Isoult?"
"I would rather be there now than here. The company is more to my
liking."
"You may be near enough by to-morrow, if what I have learned be true."
The girl's eyes grew larger and darker. "Are they going to hang me?"
she asked.
"Are you not a witch?"
"It is said."
"Your mother Mald is a witch--eh?"
"Yes, she is a witch."
"And are not you? You know Deerleap--eh?"
"It is said that I do."
"And you know what must be done to witches."
"They will hang me, Dom Galors! Will they hang me by Cutlaw and
Rogerson?"
"There is room for you there."
"What can they prove?"
"Pshaw! Is proof needed? Are you not a baggage?"
"I know not."
"A wanton?"
"Ah, you should know that!"
"If it depended upon me, Isoult, I could save you. But the Abbot means
to make an example and set a terror up before the evil-doers in this
walk of Morgraunt. What am I before the Abbot, or what is my love for
you to be brought to his ears? It is doom more certain still, my
dear."
"Then I shall be hanged."
"Listen to me now, Isoult. Listen close. No, leave your hands where
they are; they are safer there than elsewhere. So leave them and
listen close. No soul in Malbank but myself and the Lord Abbot knows
of what I have told you now. Me he told this morning. Judge if that
was good news for your lover's ear!"
Isoult shivered and hung her head. Galors went on--"At the risk of
everything a monk should fear, and of everything, by God, that such a
monk as I am should care to win, I contended with my spiritual father.
Spare me the particulars; I got some shrewd knocks over it, but I did
win this much. You are to be hanged to-morrow, Isoult, or noosed in
another way. A ring is to play a part. You shall be bride of the tree
or a man's bride. I won this, and left the Abbot chuckling, for much
as he knows he has not guessed that the goose-girl, the tossed-out
kitchen-girl, the scarecrow haunter of the heath, should be sought in
marriage. But I knew more than he; and now," he said, stooping over
the bent girl,--"and now, Isoult la Desirous, come with me!"
He tried to draw her towards him, but she trembled in his hands so
much that he had to give over. He began his arguments again, reasoned,
entreated, threatened, cajoled; he could not contain himself now,
being so near fruition. The spell of the forest was upon him. "Let
Love be the master," he said, "for there is no gainsaying him, nor can
cloister walls bar his way; but his flamy wings top even these. Ah,
Isoult!" he cried out in his passion; "ah, Isoult la Desiree, come,
lest I die of love and you of the tree."
The girl, who feared him much more than the death he had declared, was
white now and desperate. But she still held him off with her stiffened
arms and face averted. She tried to cheapen herself. "I am Matt's bad
daughter, I am Matt's bad daughter! All the tithing holds me in scorn.
Never speak of love to such as I am, Galors." And when he tried to
pull her she made herself rigid as a rod, and would not go.
So love made the man mad, and spread and possessed him. Contest goaded
Galors: action was his meat and dominion what he breathed; by
resisting she had made the end more sure. By her imprisoned wrists he
drew her in, and when she was so close that her head was almost upon
his breast, he breathed over her. "A mitred abbey have I trampled down
for your love; yes, and to be bishop of a see. Therefore you must
come."
She fell to whining and entreaty, white to the lips and dry with fear.
All that she could say was, "I am bad. I am bad, but not so bad! Never
ruin me, Dom Galors." Then it was that she heard the voice of Prosper
singing afar off on the heath. Prosper sang--
"What if my metal
Be proved as high as a hawk's in good fettle!
Then you shall see
The world my fee, And the hearts of men for my Seigniory."
And the girl thought to herself, "Help cometh!" and changed the voice
of her grief and the beating of her heart. By this the guile a woman
has always by her tongue had play: she could talk more gently to her
gaoler, and beg a little time--a short hour or so--to plan and arrange
their affairs. He thought her won and grew very tender; he kissed her
hands many times, called her his dear heart, became, in a word, the
clumsy gallant he claimed to be. All this too she endured: she began
to gabble at random, sprightly as a minion, with all the shifts of a
girl in a strait place ready at command. Her fear was double now: she
must learn the trend of the singer and his horse, and prevent Galors
from hearing either. This much she did. The sound came steadily on.
She heard the horse's hoofs strike on a flint outside the quarry, she
heard Prosper, singing softly to himself. Her time had come. She
sprang at arm's-length from Galors and called out, "Help, for
charity!" with all her might.
Prosper started, drew his sword, and headed his horse for the quarry.
In the mouth of it he reined up to look about him. He was sure of his
direction, but not of his way, "Help is here!" he cried with his sword
on high and red plumes nodding. Air and the light of the sun seemed to
follow him, as if he had cut a slit in a shroud and let in the day.
Then it was that Isoult found strength to shake free from her enemy,
to run to Prosper, to clasp his knee, to babble broken words,
entreaties for salvation, and to stoop to his foot and kiss it.
"What is all this about, my child?" asked Prosper wondering.
"Oh" cried the girl, "my lord! the monk seeks to do me a wrong, and a
shame greater than all!"
Prosper looked deeper into the quarry. There he saw Galors, the white
monk, who stood fixed, biting his nails keenly there. Then he laughed,
saying, "I cannot fight a monk," and sheathed his sword. He did not
love monks, none of his house did. He had seen the new gallows, could
measure the build of the fellow in the quarry; and though he could not
plumb the girl's soul through her misty eyes, he could read her
shaking lips and clinging hands; he could see, and be shocked to see,
how young she was to be acquainted with grief, and with sin how likely
familiar. The hint of the thing revolted him; he dared not leave her
there.
"See here, child," said he, "I will set you before me, and we will
ride together for a while. Perhaps the evening chills will temper the
monk; but if not, I am to lodge at his abbey this night, and may
prepare that for him which will cool him. Will you come up to me?"
The ghost of a smile hovered over her white drawn face for a minute.
"I will go where you will take me, my lord," said she.
"Come up with you then," he replied. He stooped there and then, took
her below the arms, and lightly swung her into the saddle before him.
There she sat, modern fashion, with his sword arm for her stay. "I
should like to read that hulk a lesson," said her protector wistfully,
"but I doubt he will have it before night. Oh, let him hang!" So he
turned and rode out of the quarry on to the heath.
Galors stood a long time in the place where they left him, drawing
blood from his bitten fingers. Darkness gathered fast with a storm of
wind and rain. Nevertheless he stayed on; and night came down to find
him still there.
CHAPTER VI
THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE
He had to talk, and as the girl gave him no help, Prosper found
himself asking questions and puzzling out the answers he got, trying
to make them fit with the facts. He was amazed that one so delicately
formed should go barefooted and bareheaded, clad in torn rags. To all
his questions she replied in a voice low and tremulous, and very
simply--that is to say, to such of them as she would answer at all. To
many--to all which touched upon Galors and his business with her in
the quarry--she was as dumb as a fish. Prosper was as patient as you
could expect.
He asked her who she was, and how called. She told him--"I am Matt-of-
the-Moors child, and men call me Isoult la Desirous."
"That is a strange name," said he. "How came you by such a name as
that?"
"Sir," said Isoult, "I have never had any other; and I suppose that I
have it because I am unhappy, and not at peace with those who seek
me."
"Who seeks you, Isoult?"
To that she gave no reply. So Prosper went on.
"If many sought you, child," he said, "you were rightly called Isoult
la Desiree, but if you, on the other hand, sought something or
somebody, then you were Isoult la Desirous. Is it not so?"
"My lord," said Isoult, "the last is my name."
"Then it must be that you too seek something. What is it that you seek,
that all the tithing knows of it?"
But she hung her head and had nothing to say. He went on to speak of
Galors, to her visible disease. When he asked what the monk wanted
with her, he felt her tremble on his arm. She began to cry, suddenly
turned her face into his shoulder, and kept it there while her sobs
shook through her.
"Well, child," said he, "dry your tears, and turn your face to such
light as there is, being well assured of this, that whatever he asked
of you he did not get, and that he will ask no more."
"I fear him, I fear him," she said very low--and again, "I fear him, I
fear him."
"Drat the monk," said Prosper, laughing, "is he to cut me out of a
compliment?"
Whereupon she turned a very woebegone and tearful face up to his. He
looked smilingly down; a sudden wave of half-humbrous pity for a thing
so frail and amazed swam about him; before he knew he had kissed her
cheek. This set her blushing a little; but she seemed to take heart,
smiled rather pitifully, and turned again with a sigh, like a baby's
for sleep.
The night gathered apace with a chill wind; some fine rain began to
fall, then heavy drops. Gradually the wind increased, and the rain
with it. "Now we shall have it," said Prosper, sniffing for the storm.
He covered Isoult with his cloak, folded it about her as best he
could, and tucked it in; she lay in his arms snug enough, and slept
while he urged his horse over the stubbed heath. The water hissed and
ran over the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and
scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock
deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober
trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and
the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or
late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to
do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered
abbey," he thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered has
too many. In the first case, therefore, Holy Thorn would leave her at
the gate, and in the second, that is where I myself would let her
stay. So it seems that she must needs have a wet skin." He felt
carefully about the sleeping child; the cloak kept her dry and warm as
a toast. She was sound asleep. "Good Lord!" cried Prosper, "it's a
pity to disturb this baby of mine. Saracen and I had better souse.
Moreover, I make no nearer, by all that appears, to river Wan or Holy
Thorn. Come up, horse; keep us moving."
The stream he had followed he now had lost. It was pitchy dark, with a
most villainous storm of rain and wind. Saracen caught the infection
of his master's doubts; he stopped short, and bowed his head to snuff
the ground. Prosper laughed at the plight they were both in, and
looked about him, considering what he should do. Very far off he could
see a feeble light flickering; it was the only speck of brightness
within his vision, and he judged it too steady for a fen-flame.
Lodging of some sort should be there, for where there is a candle
there is a candlestick. This was not firelight. To it he turned his
tired beast, and found that he had been well advised. He was before a
mud-walled hovel; there through the horn he saw the candle-flame. He
drew his sword and beat upon the door. For answer the light was blown
swiftly out, and the darkness swam about him like ink.
"Scared folk!" he laughed to himself, hammering at the door with a
will.
Then Isoult stirred on his arm and awoke with a little whimper, half
dreaming still, and not knowing where she was. She sat up in the
saddle dazed with sleep.
"The night is wild," said Prosper, "and I have found us the shadow of
a shade, but as yet we lack the substance." Then he set-to, pounding
at the door again, and crying to those within to open for the sake of
all the saints he could remember.
Isoult freed herself from the cloak, and slid down from her seat in
the saddle. Putting her face close to the door she whistled a low
note. The candle was re-lit, many bolts were withdrawn; finally the
door opened a little way, and an old man put his head through the
chink, staring out into the dark.
"God's life, you little rip," said the anxious rogue, "you gave us a
turn!"
Isoult spoke eagerly and fast, but too low for Prosper to hear what
she said. The man was in no mind to open further, and the more he
speered at the horseman the less he seemed to like it. Nevertheless,
after a time the girl was let into the hut, and the door slammed and
bolted as before. Between the shocks of the storm Prosper could now
hear a confusion of voices--Isoult's, low, even, clear and quick; the
grating comments of the old rogue who kept the door, and another voice
that trembled and wailed as if passion struggled with the age in it,
to see which should be master. Once he thought to catch a fourth--a
brisk man's voice, with laughter and some sort of authority in it,
which seemed familiar; but he could not be sure about this. In the
main three persons held the debate.
After a long wrangle it seemed that the women were to have their way.
Again the door-bolts were drawn, again the door opened by the old man,
and this time opened wide. With bows lower than the occasion demanded,
Prosper was invited to be pleased to enter. He saw to his horse first,
and made what provision he could for him in an outhouse. Then he
stooped his head and entered the cottage.
He came directly into a bare room, which was, you may say, crouched
under a pent of turves and ling, and stank very vilely. The floor was
of beaten clay, like the walls; for furniture it had a table and
bench. Sooty cobwebs dripped from the joists, and great spiders ran
nimbly over them; there were no beds, but on a heap of rotting skins
in one corner two rats were busy, and in another were some dry leaves
and bracken. There was no chimney either, though there was a peat fire
smouldering in what you must call the hearth. The place was dense with
the fog of it; it was some time, therefore, before Prosper could leave
blinking and fit his eyes to see the occupants of his lodging....
Isoult, he saw, stood in the middle of the room leaning on the table
with both her hands; her bead was hanging, and her hair veiled all her
face. Near her, also standing, was the old man--a sturdy knowing old
villain, with a world of cunning and mischief in his pair of pig's
eyes. His scanty hair, his beard, were white; his eyebrows were white
and altogether monstrous. He blinked at Prosper, but said nothing. The
third was a woman, infinitely old as it seemed, crouched over the
fired peats with her back to the room. She never looked up at all, but
muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in
a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling
with comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother
Bonaccord of Lucca.
"God save you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste
in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us--hey? But a shakedown
under a snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out
of my own country. What a port for what a night--hey?"
Prosper nodded back a greeting as he looked from one to another of
these ill-assorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the
motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her!
how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her
feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily
spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. Morgraunt had already
taught him an odd thing or two; no doubt it was Morgraunt's way.
The old man set bread and onions on the table, with some sour red wine
in a jug. "Sit and eat, my lord, while you may," he said.
So Prosper and Isoult sat upon the bench and made the most of it, and
he, being a cheerful soul, talked and joked with Brother Bonaccord.
Isoult never raised her eyes once, nor spoke a word; as for the numbed
old soul by the fire; she kept her back resolutely on the room,
muttered her charms and despair, and warmed her dry hands as before.
When they had eaten what they could there came a change. The friar
ceased talking; the old man faced Prosper with a queer look. "Sir,
have you well-eaten and drunken?" he asked.
Prosper thanked him; he had done excellently.
"Well, now," said the man, "as I have heard, after the bride-feast
comes the bridal. Will your worship rest with the bride brought home?"
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