Hereward, the Last of the English Part 77

"How came this letter into thy hands?" asked she as carelessly as she could.

"I was in Peterborough last night," said Martin, "concerning little matters of my own, and there came to me in the street a bonny young page with smart jacket on his back, smart cap on his head, and smiles and bows, and 'You are one of Hereward's men,' quoth he."

"'Say that again, young jackanapes,' said I, 'and I'll cut your tongue out,' whereat he took fright and all but cried. He was very sorry, and meant no harm, but he had a letter for my master, and he heard I was one of his men.

"Who told him that?"

"Well, one of the monks, he could not justly say which, or wouldn't, and I, thinking the letter of more importance than my own neck, ask him quietly into my friend's house. There he pulls out this and five silver pennies, and I shall have five more if I bring an answer back: but to none than Hereward must I give it. With that I calling my friend, who is an honest woman, and nigh as strong in the arms as I am, ask her to clap her back against the door, and pull out my axe."

"'Now,' said I, 'I must know a little more about this letter Tell me, knave, who gave it thee, or I'll split thy skull.'

"The young man cries and blubbers; and says that it is the Countess Alftruda, who is staying in the monastery, and that he is her serving man, and that it is as much as my life is worth to touch a hair of his head, and so forth,--so far so good.

"Then I asked him again, who told him I was my master's man?--and he confessed that it was Herluin the prior,--he that was Lady G.o.diva's chaplain of old, whom my master robbed of his money when he had the cell of Bourne years agone. Very well, quoth I to myself, that's one more count on our score against Master Herluin. Then I asked him how Herluin and the Lady Alftruda came to know aught of each other? and he said that she had been questioning all about the monastery without Abbot Thorold's knowledge, for one that knew Hereward and favored him well. That was all I could get from the knave, he cried so for fright. So I took his money and his letter, warning him that if be betrayed me, there were those would roast him alive before he was done with me. And so away over the town wall, and ran here five-and-twenty miles before breakfast, and thought it better as you see to give the letter to my lady first."

"You have been officious," said Torfrida, coldly. "'Tis addressed to your master. Take it to him. Go."

Martin Lightfoot whistled and obeyed, while Torfrida walked away proudly and silently with a beating heart.

Again G.o.diva's words came over her. Should she end in the convent of Crowland? And suspecting, fearing, imagining all sorts of baseless phantoms, she hardened her heart into a great hardness.

Martin had gone with the letter, and Torfrida never heard any more of it.

So Hereward had secrets which he would not tell to her. At last!

That, at least, was a misery which she would not confide to Lady G.o.diva, or to any soul on earth.

But a misery it was. Such a misery as none can delineate, save those who have endured it themselves, or had it confided to them by another. And happy are they to whom neither has befallen.

She wandered on and into the wild-wood, and sat down by a spring. She looked in it--her only mirror--at her wan, coa.r.s.e face, with wild black elf-locks hanging round it, and wondered whether Alftruda, in her luxury and prosperity, was still so very beautiful. Ah, that that fountain were the fountain of Jouvence, the spring of perpetual youth, which all believed in those days to exist somewhere,--how would she plunge into it, and be young and fair once more!

No! she would not! She had lived her life, and lived it well, gallantly, lovingly, heroically. She had given that man her youth, her beauty, her wealth, her wit. He should not have them a second time. He had had his will of her. If he chose to throw her away when he had done with her, to prove himself base at last, unworthy of all her care, her counsels, her training,--dreadful thought! To have lived to keep that man for her own, and just when her work seemed done, to lose him! No, there was worse than that. To have lived that she might make that man a perfect knight, and just when her work seemed done, to see him lose himself!

And she wept till she could weep no more. Then she washed away her tears in that well. Had it been in Greece of old, that well would have become a sacred well thenceforth, and Torfrida's tears have changed into forget-me-nots, and fringed its marge with azure evermore.

Then she went back, calm, all but cold: but determined not to betray herself, let him do what he would. Perhaps it was all a mistake, a fancy.

At least she would not degrade him, and herself, by showing suspicion. It would be dreadful, shameful to herself, wickedly unjust to him, to accuse him, were he innocent after all.

Hereward, she remarked, was more kind to her now. But it was a kindness which she did not like. It was shy, faltering, as of a man guilty and ashamed; and she repelled it as much as she dared, and then, once or twice, returned it pa.s.sionately, madly, in hopes--

But he never spoke a word of that letter.

After a dreadful month, Martin came mysteriously to her again. She trembled, for she had remarked in him lately a strange change. He had lost his usual loquacity and quaint humor; and had fallen back into that sullen taciturnity, which, so she heard, he had kept up in his youth. He, too, must know evil which he dared not tell.

"There is another letter come. It came last night," said he.

"What is that to thee or me? My lord has his state secrets. Is it for us to pry into them? Go!"

"I thought--I thought--"

"Go, I say!"

"That your ladyship might wish for a guide to Crowland."

"Crowland?" almost shrieked Torfrida, for the thought of Crowland had risen in her own wretched mind instantly and involuntarily. "Go, madman!"

Martin went. Torfrida paced madly up and down the farmhouse. Then she settled herself into fierce despair.

There was a noise of trampling horses outside. The men were arming and saddling, seemingly for a raid.

Hereward hurried in for his armor. When he saw Torfrida, he blushed scarlet.

"You want your arms," said she, quietly; "let me fetch them."

"No, never mind. I can harness myself; I am going southwest, to pay Taillebois a visit. I am in a great hurry, I shall be back in three days.

Then--good-by."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his arms off a perch, and hurried out again, dragging them on.

As he pa.s.sed her, he offered to kiss her; she put him back, and helped him on with his armor, while he thanked her confusedly.

"He was as glad not to kiss me, after all!"

She looked after him as he stood, his hand on his horse's withers. How n.o.ble he looked! And a great yearning came over her. To throw her arms round his neck once, and then to stab herself, and set him free, dying, as she had lived, for him.

Two bonny boys were wrestling on the lawn, young outlaws who had grown up in the forest with ruddy cheeks and iron limbs.

"Ah, Winter!" she heard him say, "had I had such a boy as that!--"

She heard no more. She turned away, her heart dead within her. She knew all that these words implied, in days when the possession of land was everything to the free man; and the possession of a son necessary, to pa.s.s that land on in the ancestral line. Only to have a son; only to prevent the old estate pa.s.sing, with an heiress, into the hands of strangers, what crimes did not men commit in those days, and find themselves excused for them by public opinion. And now,--her other children (if she ever had any) had died in childhood; the little Torfrida, named after herself, was all that she had brought to Hereward; and he was the last of his house. In him the race of Leofric, of G.o.diva, of Earl Oslac, would become extinct; and that girl would marry--whom? Whom but some French conqueror,--or at best some English outlaw. In either case Hereward would have no descendants for whom it was worth his while to labor or to fight. What wonder if he longed for a son,--and not a son of hers, the barren tree,--to pa.s.s his name down to future generations? It might be worth while, for that, to come in to the king, to recover his lands, to----She saw it all now, and her heart was dead within her.

She spent that evening neither eating nor drinking, but sitting over the log embers, her head upon her hands, and thinking over all her past life and love, since she saw him, from the gable window, ride the first time into St. Omer. She went through it all, with a certain stern delight in the self-torture, deliberately day by day, year by year,--all its lofty aspirations, all its blissful pa.s.sages, all its deep disappointments, and found in it--so she chose to fancy in the wilfulness of her misery-- nothing but cause for remorse. Self in all, vanity, and vexation of spirit; for herself she had loved him; for herself she had tried to raise him; for herself she had set her heart on man, and not on G.o.d. She had sown the wind: and behold, she had reaped the whirlwind. She could not repent; she could not pray. But oh! that she could die.

She was unjust to herself, in her great n.o.bleness. It was not true, not half, not a tenth part true. But perhaps it was good for her that it should seem true, for that moment; that she should be emptied of all earthly things for once, if so she might be filled from above.

At last she went into the inner room to lie down and try to sleep. At her feet, under the perch where Hereward's armor had hung, lay an open letter.

She picked it up, surprised at seeing such a thing there, and kneeling down, held it eagerly to the wax candle which was on a spike at the bed's head.

She knew the handwriting in a moment. It was Alftruda's.

This, then, was why Hereward had been so strangely hurried. He must have had that letter, and dropped it.

Her eye and mind took it all in, in one instant, as the lightning flash reveals a whole landscape. And then her mind became as dark as that landscape, when the flash is past.

It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free from the fascination of that sorceress. It said that all was settled with King William. Hereward was to come to Winchester. She had the King's writ for his safety ready to send to him. The King would receive him as his liegeman. Alftruda would receive him as her husband. Archbishop Lanfranc had made difficulties about the dissolution of the marriage with Torfrida: but gold would do all things at Rome; and Lanfranc was her very good friend, and a reasonable man,--and so forth.

Men, and beasts likewise, when stricken with a mortal wound, will run, and run on, blindly, aimless, impelled by the mere instinct of escape from intolerable agony. And so did Torfrida. Half undrest as she was, she fled forth into the forest, she knew not whither, running as one does wrapt in fire: but the fire was not without her, but within.

She cast a pa.s.sing glance at the girl who lay by her, sleeping a pure and gentle sleep--