The Forest Lovers
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Maurice Hewlett >> The Forest Lovers
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He collected himself at once to reassure her.
"The man is dead," he said, "and I buried him. I remember his face; I
remember a badge on his breast; I remember it all. But I do not
understand--I do not see clearly as yet. I must think. I beg you to
let me leave you for the present. To-morrow I will go to avenge
Salomon de Montguichet."
The youth was quite wild and out of breath.
"Prosper!" cried the Countess, clinging to him, "I conjure you to tell
me what this means. You will never leave me this night without a word.
You cannot know--"
She could not finish what she longed to say. As for Prosper, he was in
another world; it is doubtful whether he heard her.
"Countess," he said, "I can tell you nothing as yet. I know but half
of the truth. But I must find out the whole, and to-morrow I will tell
you what I mean to do. You must have me excused for this night."
She knew that she could say nothing more, although she had never yet
seen him in this mood. But he reminded her strongly of his father; she
felt that he and she had changed places and ages. So she bowed her
head, and when she lifted it he was gone.
Pacing his room Prosper tried to reason out his tangle. This was not
so easy as fighting, for he was pulled two different ways. Salomon de
Montguichet was the dead man whom the lady had in the wood--that was
clear. Galors had Salomon de Montguichet's arms--that too was clear.
The trouble was to connect the two strings. What had Galors to do with
the lady? Which of them had killed Salomon de Montguichet, or de Born,
to give him his real name? How did this threaten Isoult? For the
massed events of the long day drove him at last face to face with
Isoult. He had sworn upon all knightly honour to save her neck. He
thought he had saved it, but now he was not so sure. There was
something undefinably sinister, some foreboding about the turn matters
had taken (matters so diverse in their beginning) that day. Was he
sure he had saved her? He must certainly be sure, he thought. Had he
not sworn? And after all, she was his wife. That should count for
something. He was not disposed to rate marriage highly; he knew very
little about it, but he felt that it should count for something. The
honour of the man's wife touched the honour of the man. Again, she was
a very good girl. He recalled her--submissive, patient, recollected,
pacing beside him on her donkey, as they brushed their way through
brown beechwoods and stained wet bracken. He remembered her at her
prayers--how kindly she took to the devotion. She was different from
the hour she was a good Christian, he swore. Ah, so he had given her
more than a free neck! He had given her pride in herself; nay, he had
quickened a soul languid for want of spiritual food. And she looked
very well praying. She was good-looking, he thought. Oh, she was a
good girl!
But surely she was well where she was, could hardly be better. Galors
had a split throat; he would be in Saint Thorn, crying _peccavi_
in chapter, and gaining salvation with every sting of the scourge. The
woman in the wood he had distrusted from the first moment he saw her
watching eyes. She was bad through and through; she might be a worse
enemy than Galors, or a church-load of pursy monks. But it was
impossible that she should have anything to do with Galors, clean
impossible. And if she had--why, he was going to her to-morrow, and
would find out. Meantime, he would go to bed. Yes, he might go to bed.
Was not Gracedieu sanctuary? Ah, he had forgotten that! All was well.
He went to bed; but Tortsentier was not to see him on the morrow. All
was not well. He had a dream which drew all the apprehensions and
suspicions of the day into one head. The hidden things were made
plain, and the crooked things straight; for the first time, it seemed,
he was to see openly--when his eyes were shut. He had, in spite of
himself, centred them one by one in Isoult, and now he dreamed of her
as she was, and of them as they were. This was his dream. He and she
were together, lying under the stars in the open wood with his drawn
sword between them, set edgeways as it had always been. He lay awake,
but Isoult was asleep, and moaning in her sleep. The sound was like
voiced sighs which came quickly with her breath. He lay and watched
her in the perfectly clear light there was, and presently the moaning
ceased, and she opened her eyes to look at him. But though they were
wide, they were blank; he knew that she slept still. She moved her
lips to speak, but without sound; she strained out her arms to him,
but he could not take her. And, leaning more and more towards him, the
edge of the sword pressed her bare bosom, yet she seemed not to heed
it; and presently it broke the skin, and she pressed it in deeper, as
if glad of the sharp pain; and then the blood leapt out and flooded
her night-dress. Her arms dropt, she sighed once, she closed her eyes
languidly as if mortally tired. Then she lay very still, white to the
lips, and Prosper knew that she was dead. So in his own dream he cried
out and tried to come at her, but could not because of the red sword.
He woke in a cold sweat and lay trembling, blenched with fear. The
dream had been so vivid that involuntarily he turned in his bed to
look again at what haunted him, the dying eyes, the white body, and
the blood. Terror, when once he had accepted the fact that she was
dead, gave place to pity--a pity more intense than he had ever
conceived. He had pitied her on the night of their marriage, but never
to such a degree that he felt heart-broken at the mere knowledge of
such things. And now, as the principal actor in a play, she grew in
importance. He began to see that she was more than an incident; she
was of the stuff of his life.
What was more odd was, that in the dream he had wanted her, as she
him; and that he could look back upon it now and understand the
desire. With all the shock that still crowded about him till the
shadowy room seemed full of it, there was this one beam of
remembrance, like sunlight in a dusty place. He too had held out his
arms: he had wanted to take her, to hold her, white and unearthly
though she might be--dying as she certainly was. Waking, this seemed
very strange to him, for he had never wanted her before; and though
(as I say) the remembrance brought a glow along with it, he did not
want her in that way now. Supposing that she were alive and lying
here, he knew that he should not want her. But the red sword! He
shuddered and closed his eyes; there she was, pitifully dead of a
wound in the breast. I suppose he was not more superstitious than most
people of his day, but he knew that he must go to Gracedieu.
He got up at once to arm himself; he had made all his preparations
before sunrise. Then he left word for the Countess that he would
return in a day or two, and set out.
The journey could not be done under three days; that gave him two
nights in the forest, each of which brought the same dream. He arrived
at the convent late in the evening, and asked to see the Abbess at
once. The tranquil monotony of the place, its bells and recurrent
chimes, the subdued voices of the nuns chanting an office in choir,
brought him like a beaten ship into haven. He was reassured before he
saw the Abbess.
"Yes, indeed," said that lady in answer to his outburst of questions,
"the child is well. Not so bright as during the winter season, it may
be; but the spring is no easy time for young people. I may tell you,
Sir Prosper, that we have grown very fond of her. Indeed, I am often
saying that I wonder how to do without her. She is so diligent and of
so toward a disposition. You will find her well cared for, sleek, and
quite good-looking. We have great hopes for her future if she makes a
happy choice. But you will wish to see her and prove my words. I will
send for her this moment."
The Abbess had her hand-bell in her hand. If she had rung it she would
have given Prosper justification of his hurry. But the complacent
youth forestalled her.
"I beg you, mother, to do nothing of the kind," he said. "She is well,
you tell me, she is happy: that is all I cared to know. I have no wish
to unsettle her, but leave her cheerfully and confidently with you,
being well assured that you will not fail to send me word at High
March should need be."
"I understand you, sir, and agree with you. You may be quite easy
about her. We are regular livers, as you may guess, and small events
are great ones to us. So you return to High March? I will beg you to
carry with you my humble duty to her ladyship the Countess. She is
well?"
"She is very well," said Prosper, and took his leave.
A frantic Gracedieu messenger started half a night behind him, but was
stopped on Two Manors Waste by a party of outlaws, robbed of his
letters, and hanged. Prosper's dream visited him for two nights of his
journey back, and four nights at High March; but as no word or other
warning came from Gracedieu to give it point, he grew to have some
strange liking for it, since he knew that it meant nothing. It gave
him new thoughts of Isoult; it convinced him, for instance, that since
the girl was so good she must be affectionate when you came to know
her. His own share in the nightly performance he could now set in
humorous comparison with his waking state. He found it difficult to
believe in the self of his dream, and was almost curious to see Isoult
that he might pursue his juxtapositions. At this rate she filled his
waking thoughts as well as his nights. The Countess was not slow to
perceive that Prosper was changed, and she affected. His songs came
less willingly from him, his sallies were either languid or too polite
to be from the heart of the youth, who could make hers beat so fast.
Thinking that he wanted work, she devised an expedition for him which
might involve some danger and the lives of a dozen men. But she
counted that lightly. He went on the fourth day after his return from
Gracedieu, and the expedition proved effectual in more ways than one.
The dream stopped, and he forgot it.
CHAPTER XV
THREE AT TORTSENTIER
At Tortsentier there was very little daylight, because the trees about
it formed a thick wall. The branches of the pines tapped at the
windows on one side; on the other they linked arms with their
comrades, and so stood for a mile on all sides of the tower. Paths
there were none, nor ways to come by unless you were free of the
place. The winter storms moaned, lashed themselves above it, yet below
were hushed down to a long sighing. The quiet visitations of the snow,
the dripping of the autumn rains, the sun's force, the trap-bite of
the frost, or that new breath that comes stealing through woodlands in
spring, were all strangers alike to the carpet of brown needles about
Maulfry's hold. No birds ever sang there. Death and a great mystery,
the dark, air like a lake's at noon, kept fur and feather from
Tortsentier, and left Maulfry alone with what she had.
Within, it was a spacious place. A great hall ran the whole height
(although not the whole area) of it, having a gallery midway up whence
you gained what other chambers there were. Below the gallery were deep
alcoves hung with tapestry (of which Maulfry was a diligent worker),
and thickened with curtains; between every alcove hung trophies of
shields and arms. Mossy carpets, skins, and piled cushions were on the
floor; the place smelt of musk: it was lighted by coloured torches and
lamps, and warmed with braziers. It was by a spiral stair that you
found the gallery and doors of the other rooms, or as many of them as
it was fitting you should find. There were doors there which were no
doors at all unless occasion served. These rooms had windows; but the
hall had only a lantern in the roof, and its torches. From all this it
will appear that Isoult was a prisoner, since a prisoner you are if,
although you can go out, there is nowhere for you to go; if, further,
your hostess neither goes out herself nor gives you occasion to leave
her. Yet Maulfry made her guest elaborately free of the place.
"Child," she said, "you see how I live here. My trees, my birds--" she
had many birds in cages--"my collections of arms and arras and odd
books, are my friends for want of better. If you can help me to any
such I shall be very much obliged to you. Other friends I have--
yourself I may count among them, one other you know,--but they are of
the world, and refuse to hang upon my walls. Sometimes they pay me a
visit, stay for a little season, remonstrate, argue with me, shrug,
and leave me gladder than I was to receive them. I am a hermit, my
child, when all's said. These other friends, these more constant
friends, on the other hand, suit me better. They talk to me when I bid
them, are silent when I want to think. They have no vapours, unless I
give them of mine, no airs but what I choose to find in them. And they
are complaisant, they seek nothing beyond my entertainment. My friends
from outside come to please themselves and to take what they can of my
store. Sometimes they take each other. One of them (not unknown to my
Isoult!) will come before long--he is overdue now--and find my store
enriched. I doubt he will turn thief. You may well blush, child, for,
apart that it becomes you admirably, thieving is a sin, and naturally
you cannot approve of it. It is to be hoped he has rifled no treasury
already. There, there, I have your word for it; but you know my way!
Living alone in the woods at a distance from men, which makes them
ants in a swarm for me, I become a philosopher. Can you wonder?"
To such harangues, delivered with a pretty air of mockery and
extravagance, which was never allowed to get out of hand, Isoult
listened as she had listened to the cheerful prophetics of the Abbess
of Gracedieu, with her gentle smile and her locked lips. Maulfry
talked by the hour together while she and Isoult sat weaving a
tapestry. For the philosopher which it seemed she was, the subject of
the piece was very pleasant. It was the story of Troilus and
Cresseide, no less, wherein Sir Pandarus, (departing from the custom)
was represented a young man of tall and handsome presence, and the
triangle of lovers like children. Diomede was an apple-cheeked school-
boy, Troilus had a tunic and bare legs, Cresseide in her spare moments
dandled a doll. Calchas, for his part, kept a dame-school in this
piece, which for the rest was treated with a singular freedom. Isoult,
poor girl, was occasionally troubled at her part of the work; but the
philosopher laughed heartily at her.
"What ails thee with the piece, child?" she would cry out in her
hearty way. "Dost thou think lovers are men and women, to be taken
seriously? It is to be hoped they are not, forsooth! For if they are
not innocent, what shall be said of their antics?" and more to the
same tune.
While affecting to treat her with freedom, Maulfry kept in reality a
steady rein.
"Go out?" she would cry in mock dismay, at the least hint of such a
wish from the girl--"why under the sun should we go out? To see a
thicket of twigs and breathe rotten vapours? Or do you think we have
processions passing in and out of the tree-trunks? Ah, minx, 'tis a
procession of one you would be spying for! Nay, nay, never look big
eyes at me, child. I know your processioner better than you. He will
come in his time; and whether he come through the door or down the
stairs I cannot tell you yet. Who taught you, pray, that he was in the
wood? Not I, I vow. Why should he not be skulking in the blue alcove
awaiting the hour? You look thither; how you kindle at a word! Well,
well, go and see for yourself if he is in the blue alcove."
Poor trembling Isoult went on tiptoe, was fool enough to peep through
the curtains, but good soul enough to take Maulfry's railing in fair
part. She got as much as she deserved, and the joke was none too good
perhaps; but as a trick, it sufficed to keep her on the fine edge of
expectation. She dared not go out for fear of missing Prosper. She
grew so tight-strung as to doubt of nothing. Had Maulfry told her he
would be with them to supper on such and such a night, she would have
come shaking to the meal, rosy as a new bride, nothing doubting but
that the next lift of her shy eyes would reveal him before her. Thus
Maulfry by hints in easy degrees led her on; and not only did she not
dare to go out, but she lost all wish to peer for him in the wood,
because she had been led to the conviction that he was actually in the
tower--a mysterious, harboured visitant who would appear late or soon,
obedient to his destiny. A door even was pointed at, smiled and winked
at, passed by light-foot as they went along the gallery. Maulfry had a
biting humour which sometimes led her further than she was aware.
She kept Isoult in a fever by her tricks; by this particular trick she
risked a different fire--jealousy. For of the four persons who made up
the household, she alone went behind that door. Vincent, the young
page, brought food and wine to the threshold; Maulfry came out and
took them in. But there she was perfectly safe. Isoult could never be
jealous of Prosper; she would despair, but would resent nothing he
might do. Jealousy requires two things exorbitantly--self-love and a
sensitive surface. Isoult loved Love and Prosper--the two in one
glorious image; and as for her surface, that, like the rest of her,
body and soul, was his when Love allowed. Nor was she even curious, at
first. Many thrashings, acquaintance with her world which was close if
not long, and a deeply-driven scorn of herself threw her blindly upon
the discretion of the only man she had ever found to be at once
splendid and humane. What he chose was the law and what he declared
the prophets. But she might get curious on other grounds, on grounds
where destiny and suchlike mannish appendages did not hold up a finger
at her. And in fact she did.
* * * * *
Meantime Maulfry took charge of her body and will. Isoult was obedient
in everything but one. Maulfry, who always saw the girl undress and go
to bed, objected to her prayers.
"Pray!" she would call out, "for what and to what do you pray? Pray to
your husband when you have one, and he will give you according to your
deserts, which he alone can appraise. Trust him for that. But to crave
boons you know little of, from a God of whom you know nothing at all,
save that you made him in your own image--what profit can that be?"
To which Isoult replied, "He told me always to pray, ma'am, and I
cannot disobey any of his words."
"Ah, I remember he was given to the game. Hum! And what else did he
tell you, child?"
"Deal justly, live cleanly, breathe sweet breath," Isoult answered in
a whisper, as if she were in church: "praise God when He is kind, bow
head and knees when He is angry, look for Him to be near at all times.
Do this, and beyond it trust to thine own heart."
Maulfry pished and pshawed at this hushed oracle. "You would do better
to eat well and sleep softly. 'Twould bring you nearer your heart's
desire. Men like a girl to be sleek."
But in this Isoult had her way, though she said her prayers in bed. In
all else she was meek as a mouse. Maulfry made her dress to suit her
own taste, and let down her hair. The dress was of thin silk, fitted
close, and was cut low in the neck. Isoult, who had known pinned rags,
and had gone feet and legs bare without a thought, went now as if she
were naked, or clothed only in her shame. But it was the fashion
Maulfry adopted towards her own person, and there were no others to
convict her. Nanno the old serving-woman and Vincent the page, who was
only a boy, made up the household-except for the closed door. Nanno
never looked at anything higher than the ground; and as for Vincent,
he was in love with Isoult, and would sooner have looked at Christ in
judgment.
Of those two people Nanno was believed to be dumb; Isoult, at least,
never got speech of her. Vincent, who was treated by Maulfry as if he
had been a mechanism, was a very simple machine. If Maulfry had been
less summary with him she might have prevented the inevitable; but
like all people with brains she thought a simpleton was an ass, and
kicks your only speech with such. Vincent and Isoult, therefore,
became friends as the days went on. Maulfry's cagebirds drew their
heads together, and in Vincent's case, at any rate, it was not long
before the blood began to beat livelier for the contact. Isoult was as
simple as he was, and concealed nothing from him that came up in their
talks together. She knew much more than he about birds, about the
woods, the country beyond the forest--great rolling sheep-pastures,
dim stretches of fen, sleepy rivers, the heaths and open lands about
Malbank. Of all these things which came to him through her voice
almost with a breath of their own roving air, he knew absolutely
nothing, whereas there was very little county-lore which she did not
know. She seemed indeed to him a woodland creature herself, in touch
with the birds and beasts. She could put her hand into a cage full of
them; the little twinkling eyes were steady upon her, but there was no
fluttering or beating at the bars. Her hand closed on the bird, drew
it out: the next minute it was free upon her shoulder, peeping into
her sidelong face. She could hold it up to her lips: it would take the
seed from her. The horses knew her call and her speaking voice. They
would go and come, stand or start, as she whispered in their pricked
ears. Vincent thought she might easily be a fairy. But, "No, Vincent,"
she would say to that, "I am a very poor girl, poorer than you."
One day Vincent disputed this point.
"You go in silks and have pearls on your head."
"They are not mine, Vincent."
"My mistress loves you."
"Oh, in love I am very rich," said the girl.
"Everybody would love you, I think," he dared.
But she shook her head at this.
"I have not found that. I am not sure of anybody's love."
"I know of one person of whom you may be very sure," said the boy, out
of breath.
"But I never meant that when I said I was rich. I meant that I was
rich in love, not in being loved. Ah, no!"
"You ask not to be loved, Isoult?"
"Oh, it would be impossible to be loved as I mean, as I love."
"I would like to know that. Whom do you love?"
"Why, my lord, of course! Must I not love my lord?"
"Your lord!" stammered Vincent, red to the roots of his hair. "Your
lord! I never knew that you loved a lord." He gulped, and went on at
random--"And where is your lord?"
"I cannot tell. He may be in this castle. I only know that I shall see
him when his time comes."
"If he is in this castle, Isoult," said Vincent, sober again, "his
time is not yet."
She caught her breath.
"How do you know that?" she panted.
"I know that there is a great lord in the Red Chamber, him that Madam
Maulfry tends with her own hands."
"Ah, ah! You have seen him?"
"No, I have never seen him. He is very ill."
Isoult gazed at him, shocked to the soul. Ill, and she not near by!
"Oh, Vincent," she whispered. "Oh, Vincent!"
"Yes, Isoult,"--Vincent had caught some breath of her horror, and
whispered,--"Yes, Isoult, he is very ill. He has been ill since the
autumn, with bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. I know that is true,
though I have never seen him since he was brought here swathed up in a
litter; but I once saw Madam Maulfry bury something in the wood, very
early in the morning. And I was frightened. Ah! I have seen strange
things here, such as I dare not utter even now. So I watched my time
and dug up what she had concealed. They were bloody clothes, Isoult,
very many of them, and ells long! So it is true."
Isoult swayed about like a broken bough. Vincent ran to catch her,
fearing she would fall. He felt the shaking of her body under his
hands. That frightened him. He began to beseech.
"Isoult, dear Isoult, I have hurt you, I who would rather die, I who--
am very fond of you, Isoult. Look now, be yourself again--think of
this. He may not be ill by now; he is likely much better. I will find
out for you. Trust me to find it all out."
"No, no, no," she whispered in haste; "you must do nothing, can do
nothing. This is mine. I will find out"
"Will you ask Madam Maulfry?" said Vincent. "She will kill me if she
knows that I have told you. Not that I mind that," he added in his own
excuse, "but you will gain nothing that way."
"No," Isoult answered curtly. "I will find out by myself. Hush! Some
one is coming. Go now."
Vincent went slowly away, for he too heard the sweep of Maulfry's
robe. There was a long looking-glass in the wall, flickering over
which Isoult's eyes encountered their own woeful image-brooding,
reproachful, haunted eyes; this would never do for her present
business. Determined to meet craft with craft, she wried her mouth to
a smile, she drove peace into her eyes, took a bosomful of breath, and
turned to be actress for the first time in her life. This meant to
realize and then express herself. She was like to become an artist.
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