The Forest Lovers

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"I think I should speak to her myself," said the Abbess, not without
decision.

"So you shall," Prosper agreed; "but it will be better that I prepare
her. If you will allow me I will do so at once, as I should leave
early to-morrow."

"There goes a young man who should climb high," said the Lady Abbess,
as her guest paid his respects.

Prosper went into the cloister, and found Isoult sitting with the
mistress of the novices and her girls who were at work there. She
looked tired and constrained, but lit up when he came in, firing a
girl's signals in her cheeks. As for her eyes, the moment Prosper
appeared they never wavered from him.

He excused himself to the nun, saying that he had business with
Isoult, which by leave of the Abbess he might transact in the guest
chamber. One of the novices conducted him; Isoult followed meekly.

Once alone with her, Prosper sat down by the fire and told Isoult to
fetch a stool and sit by him. She did as she was bid, sat at his knee,
folded her hands in her lap, and waited for him to begin, looking
thoughtfully into the fire. Prosper laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"Isoult," he said, "We have got our sanctuary, as you see, and for all
that appears need neither have sought nor claimed it. We have had no
pursuit worthy the name. It is evident to me that they have calculated
the deserts of Master Galors at Malbank, and put it at our figure.
Nevertheless, I am glad to be at Gracedieu, for I had decided upon it
before ever we met and drubbed that monk. When I saved you from being
hanged I saved your body; now I shall think of your soul's health,
which (the Church tells us) is far more precious. For it would seem
that a man can do without a body, but by no means without a soul. Now,
I have married you, Isoult, and by that act saved your body; but I
have not as yet done any more, for though I have heard many things of
marriage, I never heard that it was good for the soul. Moreover, for
marriage to be tolerable, I suppose love is necessary,"--Isoult
started,--"and that we certainly know nothing about it." Isoult
shivered very slightly, so slightly that Prosper did not notice it. "I
have thought a great deal about you, my child," he continued, "since I
married you, and something also of myself, my destinies, and duties as
a knight and good Christian. I have decided to go at once to High
March, where I shall find the Countess Isabel. She, being an old
friend of my family's, will no doubt take me into her service. I shall
fight for her of course, I shall win honour and renown, very likely a
fief. With that behind me I shall go to Starning and trounce my
brother Malise, baron or no baron. I shall bring him to his knees in a
cold sweat, and then I shall say--`Get up, you ass, and learn not to
meddle again with a gentleman, and son of a gentleman.'

"In addition to that business I have a certain matter to inquire into
concerning a lady whom I met in the purlieus of this forest, and a
dead man she had with her. I do not like the looks of that case.
Certainly I must inquire into it, and do what pertains. There may be
other things needing my direction, but if there are I have forgotten
them for the moment.

"You will think that in all this I have also forgotten you, child. Far
from it. Listen now. You cannot of course go to High March. You would
not be happy there, nor am I in a position to make you happy. No, no;
you shall stay here with the good nuns, and be useful to them, and
happy with them. You shall learn to serve God, so that in time you may
become a nun yourself. You know my thoughts about monks, that I do not
like them. But nuns are quite otherwise. Our Lord Jesus was served by
two women, of whom Mary was assuredly a nun, and Martha a religious
woman equally, probably of the begging order--a sister of Saint Clare,
or of the order of Mount Carmel. The point is, I believe, still in
doubt. So you see that you have excellent examples before you to
persevere. When I have put my affairs in train at High March I will
come and see you; and as you are my wife, if any trouble should come
about you, any sickness, or threatening from without, or any private
grief, send me word, and I will never fail you. Moreover, have no
doubts of my fidelity: I am a gentleman, Isoult, as you know. And
indeed such pranks are not to my taste."

He stopped talking, but not patting the girl's shoulder. It was almost
more than she could endure. At first her blank and sheer dismay had
been almost comical; she had looked at him as if he was mad, or
talking gibberish. The even flow of his reasoning went on, and with it
a high satisfaction in all his plans patent even to her cloudy
intellect; gradually thus the truth dawned upon her, and as he
continued she lost the sense of his spoken thoughts in the mad cross-
tides of her own unuttered. Now her crying instinct was for rescue at
all costs, at any hazard. Prayers, entreaties, cravings for reprieve
thronged unvoiced and not to be voiced through every fibre of her
body. Could he not spare her? Could he not? If she could turn suddenly
upon him, clasp his knees, worm herself between his arms, put her
face--wet, shaking, tremulous, but ah, Lord! how full of love--near to
his! If she could! She could not; shame froze her, choked not speech
only but act; she was dumb through and through--a dumb animal.

"Well, Isoult, what do you say?" he asked in his cheerful voice. He
could hardly hear her answer, it came so low.

"I will do thy pleasure, lord," she murmured.

He stooped and kissed her forehead, not noticing how she shook.

"Good child," he said, "good child! I am more than satisfied with you,
and hope that I may have proved as pleasant a traveller as I have
found you to be. My salute must be for good-night and farewell,
Isoult, for to-morrow morning I shall be gone before you have turned
your side in bed. That is where you should be now, my dear. Your head
is very hot--a sign that you are tired. Forget not what I have said to
you in anything; forget not to trust me. They will show you your bed.
Good-bye, Isoult."

She muttered something inaudible with her lips, and went out without
looking at him again. Every bone in her body ached so cruelly that she
could hardly drag herself along. She could neither think nor cry out;
what strength she had went towards carrying this new load, which,
while it paralyzed, for the present numbed her as well. The mistress
of the novices was shocked to see her white drawn face, heavily-
blacked eyes, and to hear a dead voice come dully from such pretty
lips.

"My dear heart," said the good woman, "you are tired to death. Come
with me to the still-room; I will give you a cordial." The liquor at
least sent some blood to her face and lips, with whose help she was
able to find her bed. For that night she had for bedfellow a fat nun,
who snored and moaned in her sleep, was fretful at the least stir, and
effectually prevented her companion from snoring, in turn, if she had
been afflicted with that disease. Isoult stirred little enough: being
worn out with grief entirely new to her, to say nothing of her fatigue
of travel, she lay like a log and (what she had never done before)
dreamed horribly. Very early, before light, she was awake and face to
face with her anguish again. She lay in a waking stupor, fatally
sensible, but incapable of responsible action. She had to hear
Prosper's voice in the courtyard sharply inquiring of the way, his
words to his horse, all his clinking preparations; she heard his high-
sung "Heaven be with you; pray for me," and the diminishing chorus of
Saracen's hoofs on the road. She trembled so much during this torment
that she feared to shake the bed. Very weakness at last took pity on
her; she swooned asleep again, this time dreamless. The fat nun
getting up for Prime, also took enough pity upon her to let her he. So
it was that Prosper left Gracedieu.

CHAPTER XII

BROKEN SANCTUARY

Through the days of rain and falling leaves, when all the forest was
sodden with mist; through the dark days of winter, hushed with snow,
she stayed with the nuns, serving them meekly in whatever tasks they
set her. She was once more milk-maid and cowherd, laundress again,
still-room maid for a season, and in time (being risen so high) tire-
woman to the Lady Abbess herself. Short of profession you can get no
nearer the choir than that. It was not by her tongue that she won so
much favour--indeed she hardly spoke at all; as for pleasantness she
never showed more than the ghost of a smile. "I am in bondage," she
said to herself, "in a strange house, and no one knows what treasure I
hide in my bosom." There she kept her wedding-ring. But if she was
subdued, she was undeniably useful, and there are worse things in a
servant than to go staidly about her work with collected looks and
sober feet, to have no adventurous traffic with the men-servants about
the granges or farms, never to see nor hear what it would be
inconvenient to know--in a word, to mind her business. In time
therefore--and that not a long one as times go--her featness and
patience, added to her beauty (for it was not long before the gentler
life or the richer possession made her very handsome), won her the
regard of everybody in the house.

The Abbess, as I have told you already, took her into high favour
before Christmas was over--actually by Epiphany she could suffer no
other to dress her or be about her person.

She loved pretty maids, she said, when they were good. Isoult was
both, so the Abbess loved her. The two got to know each other, to take
each other's measure--to their reciprocal advantage. Isoult was very
guarded how she did; what she said was always impersonal, what she
heard never went further. The Abbess was pleased. She would often
commend her, take her by the chin, turn up her face and kiss her. A
frequent strain of her talk was openly against Prosper's ideas: the
Abbess thought Prosper a ridiculous youth.

"Child," she would say--and Isoult thrilled at the familiar word
(Prosper's!)--"Child, you are too good-looking to be a nun. In due
season we must find you a husband. Your knight seemed aghast at the
thought that salvation could be that way. Some fine morning the young
gentleman will sing a very different note. Meantime he is wide of the
mark. For our blessed Lord loveth not as men love (who love as they
are made), nor would He have them who are on the earth and of it do
otherwise than seek the fairest that it hath to give them. Far from
that, but He will draw eye to eye and lip to lip, so both be pure,
saying, 'Be fruitful, and plenish the earth.' But to those not so
favoured as you are He saith, 'Come, thou shalt be bride of Heaven,
and lie down in the rose-garden of the Lamb.' So each loves in her
degree, and according to the measure of her being; and it is very well
that this should be so, in order that the garners of Paradise may one
day be full."

This sort of talk, by no means strange on the old lady's part,
sometimes tempted Isoult to tell her story--that she was a wife
already. No doubt she would have done it had not a thought forborne
her. Prosper did not love her; their relations were not marital--so
much she knew as well as anybody. She would never confess her love for
him, even to Prosper himself; she could not bring herself to own that
she loved and was unloved. She thought that was a disgrace, one that
would flood her with shame and Prosper with her, as her husband though
only in name. She thought that she would rather die than utter this
secret of hers; she believed indeed that she soon would die. That was
why she never told the Abbess, and again why she made no effort nor
had any temptation to run away and find him out. It seemed to her that
her mere appearance before him would be a confession of deep shame.

But she never ceased for an hour to think of him, poor miserable. In
bed she would lie for whole watches awake, calling his name over and
over again in a whisper. Her ring grew to be a familiar, Prosper's
genius. She would take it from her bosom and hold it to her lips,
whisper broken words to it, as if she were in her husband's arms. With
the same fancy she would try to make it understand how she loved him.
That is a thing very few girls so much as know, and still fewer can
utter even to their own hearts; and so it proved with her. She was as
mute and shamefaced before the ring as before the master of the ring.
So she would sigh, put it back in its nest, and hide her face in the
pillow to cool her cheeks. At last in tears she would fall asleep. So
the days dragged.

In February, when the light drew out, when there was a smell of wet
woods in the air, when birds sang again in the brakes, and here and
there the bushes facing south budded, matters grew worse for her. She
began to be very heavy, her nightly vigils began to tell. She could
not work so well, she lagged in her movements, fell into stares and
woke with starts, blundered occasionally. She had never been a
fanciful girl, having no nurture for such flowering; but now her
visions began to be distorted. Her love became her thorn, her side one
deep wound. More and more of the night was consumed in watchings; she
cried easily and often (for any reason or no reason), and she was apt
to fall faint. So February came and went in storms, and March brought
open weather, warm winds, a carpet of flowers to the woods. This
enervated, and so aggravated her malady: the girl began to droop and
lose her good looks. In turn the Abbess, who was really fond of her,
became alarmed. She thought she was ill, and made a great pet of her.
She got no better.

She was allowed her liberty to go wherever she pleased. In her trouble
she used to run into the woods, with a sort of blind sense that
physical distress would act counter to her sick soul. She would run as
fast as she could: her tears flew behind her like rain. Over and over
to herself she whispered Prosper's name as she ran--"Prosper! Prosper
le Gai! Prosper! Prosper, my lord!" and so on, just as if she were
mad. It was in the course of these distracted pranks that she
discovered and fell in love with a young pine tree, slim and straight.
She thought that it (like the ring) held the spirit of Prosper, and
adored him under its bark. She cut a heart in it with his name set in
the midst and her own beneath. Ceremony thereafter became her relief
and all she cared about. She did mystic rites before her tree (in
which the ring played a part), forgetting herself for the time. She
would draw out her ring and look at it, then kiss it. Then it must be
lifted up to the length of its chain as she had seen the priest
elevate the Host at Mass; she genuflected and fell prone in mute
adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She
was at this time like to dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries
ended with the _Pater Noster_, the _Ave_, a certain Litany which
the nuns had taught her, and some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin
and Saint Isidore. Love was scourging her slender body at this time truly,
and with well-pickled rods.

On a certain day of mid-March,--it would be about the twelfth,--as she
was at these exercises about the mystic tree, a tall lady in Lincoln
green and silver furs came out of a thicket and saw Isoult, though
Isoult saw not her. She stood smiling, watching the poor devotee;
then, choosing her time, came quietly behind her, saw the heart and
read the names. This made her smile all the more, and think a little.
Then she touched Isoult on the shoulder with the effect of bringing
her from heaven to dull earth in a trice. By some instinct--she was
made of instincts, quick as a bird--the girl concealed her ring before
she turned.

"Why are you crying, child?" said this smiling lady.

"Oh ma'am!" cried the girl, half crazy and beside herself with her
troubles--"Oh, ma'am! let me tell you a little!"

She told her more than a little: she told her in fact everything--in a
torrent of words and tears--except the one thing that might have
helped her. She did not say that she was married, though short of that
she gulped the shame of loving unloved.

"Poor child!" said the lady when she had heard the sobbed confession,
"you are indeed in love. And Prosper le Gai is your lover? And you are
Isoult la Desirous? So these notches declare at least: they are yours,
I suppose?"

"Yes, indeed, ma'am," said Isoult; "but he is not my lover. He is my
master."

"Oh, of course, of course, child," the lady laughed--"they are always
the master. If we are the mistress we are lucky. And do you love him
so much, Isoult?"

"Yes, ma'am," said she.

"Silly girl, silly girl! How much do you love him now?"

"I could not tell you, ma'am."

"Could you tell him then?"

"Ah, no, no!"

"But you have told him, silly?"

"No, ma'am, indeed."

"It needs few words, you must know."

"They are more than I can dare, ma'am."

"It can be done without words at all. Come here, Isoult. Listen."

She whispered in her ear.

Isoult grew very grave. Her eyes were wide at this minute, all black,
and not a shred of colour was left in her face.

"Ah, never!" she cried.

Maulfry laughed heartily.

"You are the dearest little goose in the world!" she cried. "Come and
kiss me at once."

Isoult did as she was told. Maulfry did not let her go again.

"Now," she went on, with her arms round the girl's waist and her arch
face very near, "now you are to know, Isoult, that I am a wonderful
lady. I am friends with half the knights in the kingdom; I have armour
of my own, shields and banneroles, and halberts and swords, enough to
frighten the Countess Isabel out of her three shires. I could scare
the Abbot Richard and the Abbess Mechtild by the lift of a little
finger. Oh, I know what I am saying! It so happens that your Prosper
is a great friend of mine. I am very fond of him, and of course I must
needs be interested in what you tell me. Well now--come with me and
find him. Will you? I dare say he is not very far off."

Isoult stared at her without speaking. Doubt, wonder, longing, prayer,
quavered in her eyes as each held the throne for a time.

"He told me to stay at Gracedieu," she faltered. It seemed to her that
she was maiming her own dream.

"He tells me differently then," said Maulfry, smiling easily; "I
suppose even a lover may change his mind."

"Oh! Oh! you have seen him?

"Certainly I have seen him."

"And he says--"

"What do you think he says? Might it not be, Come and find me?"

"He is--ah, he is ill?"

"He is well."

"In danger?"

"I know of none."

"I am to leave Gracedieu and come with you, ma'am?"

"Yes. Are you afraid?"

For answer Isoult fell flat down and kissed Maulfry's silver hem.

"I will follow you to death!" she cried.

Maulfry shivered, then arched her brows.

"It will not be so bad as all that," she said. "Come then, we will
find the horses."

Isoult looked down confusedly at her grey frock.

"You little jay bird, who's to see you here among the trees? Come with
me, I'll set you strutting like a peacock before I've done with you,"
said Maulfry, in her mocking, good-humoured way.

They went together. Maulfry had hold of Isoult by the hand. Presently
they came to an open glade where there were two horses held by a
mounted groom. As soon as he saw them coming the groom got off, helped
Isoult first, then his mistress. They rode away at a quick trot down
the slope; the horses seemed to know the way.

Maulfry was in high spirits. She played a thousand tricks, and
enveigled from the brooding girl her most darling thoughts. Before
they had made their day's journey she had learnt all that she wanted
to know, or rather what she knew already. It confirmed what Galors had
told her: she believed his story. For her part Isoult, having once
made the plunge, gave her heart its way, bathed it openly in love, and
was not ashamed. To talk of Prosper more freely than she had ever
dared even to herself, to talk of loving him, of her hopes of winning
him! She seemed a winged creature as she flew through the hours of a
forest day. It pleased her, too, to think that she was being discreet
in saying nothing of her marriage. If Prosper had not thought fit to
reveal it to his accomplished friend she must keep the secret by all
means--his and hers. Instead of clouding her hopeful visions this gave
them an evening touch of mystery. It elevated her by making her an
accomplice. He and she were banded together against this all-wise
lady. No doubt she would learn it in time--in his time; and then
Isoult dreamed (and blushed as she dreamed) of another part, wherein
she would snuggle herself into his arm and whisper, "Have I not been
wise?" Then she would be kissed, and the lady would laugh to learn how
she had been outwitted by a young girl. Ah, what dreams! Isoult's
wings took her a far flight when once she had spread them to the sun.

Journeying thus they reached a road by nightfall, and a little House
of Access. To go direct to Tortsentier they should have passed this
house on the left-hand, for the tower was south-east from Gracedieu.
But there was a reason for the circuit, as for every other twist of
Maulfry's; the true path would have brought them too nearly upon that
by which Prosper and Isoult had come seeking sanctuary. Instead they
struck due east, and hit the main road which runs from High March to
Market Basing; then by going south for another day they would win
Tortsentier. Isoult, of course, as a born woodlander would know the
whereabouts of Maulfry's dwelling from any side but the north. She was
of South Morgraunt, and therefore knew nothing of the north or middle
forest. All this Maulfry had calculated. At the House of Access the
girl was actually a day's journey nearer Prosper than she had been at
the convent, but she knew nothing of it. Consequently her night's rest
refreshed her, waking dreams stayed the night, and left traces of
their rosy flames in her cheeks next morning. Maulfry, waking first,
looked at her as she lay pillowing her cheek on her arm, with her wild
hair spread behind her like a dark cloud. Maulfry, I say, looked at
her.

"You are a little beauty, my dear," she thought to herself. "Countess
or bastard, you are a little beauty. And there is countess in your
blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head,
tell the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained
troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of
witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear
friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help
you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. She needs no
crown, pardieu!"

She knew her own crown had toppled, and grew a little bleak as she
thought of it. There was no earldom for her to fall back upon. She
looked older when off her guard. But she had determined to be loyal to
the one friend she had ever had. The worst woman in the world can do
that much. Therefore, when Isoult woke up she found herself made much
of. The sun of her day-dreaming rose again and shone full upon her. By
the end of the day they had reached Tortsentier. Isoult was fast in a
prison that had no look of a prison, where Galors was mending his
throat in an upper chamber.

Maulfry came and sat on the foot of his bed. Galors, strapped and
bandaged till he looked like a mewed owl in a bush, turned his chalk
face to her with inquiry shooting out of his eyes. He had grown a
spiky black beard, from which he plucked hairs all day, thinking and
scheming.

"Well," was all he said.

Maulfry nodded. "The story is true. She has the feet and hands. She is
a little beauty. You have only to shut the hole in your neck."

Galors swore. "Let God judge whether that damned acrobat shall pay for
his writhing! But the other shall be my first business. So she is
here--you have seen her? What do you think of her?"

"I have told you."

The man's appetite grew as it fed upon Maulfry's praise of his taste.

"Ah--ah! Dame, I'm a man of taste--eh?"

Maulfry said nothing. Galors changed the note.

"How shall I thank you, my dear one?" he asked her.

"Ah," said she, "I shall need what you can spare before long."

Then she left him.

CHAPTER XIII

HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY

In the weeping grey of an autumn morning, but in great spirits of his
own, Prosper left Gracedieu for High March. The satisfaction of having
braved the worst of an adventure was fairly his; to have made good
disposition of what threatened to fetter him by shutting off any
possible road from his advance; and to have done this (so far as he
could see) without in any sense withdrawing from Isoult the advantages
she could expect--this was tunable matter, which set him singing
before the larks were off the ground. He felt like a man who has
earned his pleasure; and pleasure, as he understood it, he meant to
have. The zest for it sparkled in his quick eyes as he rode briskly
through the devious forest ways. Had Galors or any other dark-entry
man met him now and chanced a combat, he would have bad it with a
will, but he would have got off with a rough tumble and sting or two
from the flat of the sword. The youth was too pleased with himself for
killing or slicing.

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