Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Part 51

One evening when the woods were in full leaf, and summer on the edge of its zenith, Proud Rosalind walked among the trees seeking green herbs for soup. She had wandered far afield, because there were no woods near the castle, standing on its high ground above the open flats and the river beyond. But gazing over the water she could see the groves and crests upon the hills where some sustenance was. The swift way was over the river, but there was no boat to serve her except Harding's; and this was a service she had never asked of old, and lately would rather have died than ask. So she took daily to the winding roads that led to a distant bridge and the hills with their forests. This day her need was at its sorest. When she had gathered a meager crop she sat down under a tree, and began to sort out the herbs upon her knees. One tender leaf she could not resist taking between her teeth, that had had so little else of late to bite on; and as she did so coa.r.s.e laughter broke upon her. It was her rude suitor who had chanced across her path, and he mocked at her, crying, "This is the Proud Rosalind that will not eat at an honest man's board, choosing rather to dine after the high fashion of the kine and a.s.ses!" Then from his pouch he s.n.a.t.c.hed a crust of bread and flung it to her, and said, "Proud Rosalind, will you stoop for your supper?"

She rose, letting the precious herbs drop from her lap, and she trod them into the earth as weeds gathered at hazard, so that the putting of the leaf between her lips might wear an idle aspect; and then she walked away, with her head very high. But she was nearly desperate at leaving them there, and when she was alone her pain of hunger increased beyond all bounds. And she sat down on the limb of a great beech and leaned her brow against his mighty body, and shut her eyes, while the light changed in the sky. And presently the leaves of the forest were lit by the moon instead of the sun, and the s.p.a.ces in the top boughs were dark blue instead of saffron, and the small clouds were no longer fragments of amber, but bits of mottled pearl seen through sea-water.

But Rosalind witnessed none of these slow changes, and when after a great while she lifted her faint head, she saw only that the day was changed to night. And on the other side of the beech-tree, touched with moonlight, a motionless white stag stood watching her. It was a hart of the sixth year, and stood already higher than any hart of the twelfth; full five foot high it stood, and its grand soft shining flanks seemed to be molded of marble for their grandeur, and silk for their smoothness, and moonlight for their sheen. Its new antlers were branching towards their yearly strength, and the triple-pointed crowns rose proudly from the beam that was their last perfection. The eyes of the girl and the beast met full, and neither wavered. The hart came to her noiselessly, and laid its muzzle on her hair, and when she put her hand on its pure side it arched its n.o.ble neck and licked her cheek.

Then, stepping as proudly and as delicately as Rosalind's self, it moved on through the trees; and she followed it.

The forest changed from beech to pine and fir. It deepened and grew strange to her. She did not know it. And the light of the sky turned here from silver to gray, and she felt about her the stir of unseen things. But she looked neither to the right nor the left, but followed the snow-white hart that went before her. It brought her at last to its own drinking-place, and as soon as she saw it old rumors gathered themselves into a truth, and she knew that this was the lost Wishing-Pool. And she remembered that this night was Midsummer Eve, and by the position of the ghostly moon she saw it was close on midnight.

So she knelt down by the edge of the mere, and stretched her hands above it, the palms to the stars, and in a low clear voice she made her prayer.

"Whatever spirit dwells under these waters," said she, "I know not whether you are a power for good or ill. But if it is true that you will answer in this hour the need of any that calls on you--oh, Spirit, my need is very great to-night. Hunger is bitter in my body, and my strength is nearly wasted. A hind cast me his crust to-day, and five hours I have battled with myself not to creep back to the place where it still lies and eat of that vile bread. I do not fear to die, but I fear to die of my hunger lest they sneer at the last of my race brought low to so mean a death. Neither will I die by my own act, lest they think my courage broken by these breaking days. On my knees," said she, "I beseech you to send me in some wise a little money, if it be but a handful of pennies now and then throughout the year, so that I may keep my head unbowed. Or if this is too much to ask, and even of you the asking is not easy, then send some high and sudden accident of death to blot me out before I grow too humble, and the lofty spirits of my fathers deny one whose spirit ends as lowly as their dust. Death or life I beg of you, and I care not which you send."

Then clasping her hands tightly, she called twice more her plea across the mere: "Spirit of these waters, grant me life or death! Oh, Spirit, grant me life or death!"

There was a stir in the forest as she made an end, and she remained stock still, waiting and wondering. But though she knelt there till the moon had crossed the bar of midnight, nothing happened.

Then the white hart, which had lain beside the water while she prayed, rose silently and drank; and when it was satisfied, laid once more its muzzle on her hair and licked her cheek again and moved away. Not a twig snapped under its slender stepping. Its whiteness was soon covered by the blackness.

Faint and exhausted, Rosalind arose. She dragged herself through the wood and presently found the broad road that curled down the deserted hill and over the bridge, and at last by a branching lane to her ruined dwelling. The door of her tower creaked desolately to and fro a little, open as she had left it. She pushed it further ajar and stumbled in and up the narrow stair. But the pale moonlight entered her chamber with her, silvering the oaken stump that was her table; and there, where there had been nothing, she beheld two little heaps of copper coins.

The gold year waned, and the next pa.s.sed from white to green; and in the gold Harding began to hunt his hart, and by the green had not succeeded in bringing it to bay. Twice he had seen it at a distance on the hills, and once had started it from cover in Coombe Wood and followed it through the Denture and Stammers, Great Bottom and Gumber, Earthem Wood and Long Down, Nore Hill and Little Down; and at Punchbowl Green he lost it. He did not care. A long chase had whetted him, and he had waited so long that he was willing to wait another year, and if need were two or three, for his royal quarry. He knew it must be his at last, and he loved it the more for the speed and strength and cunning with which it defied him. It had a secret lair he could never discover; but one day that secret too should be his own. Meanwhile his blood was heated, and the Red Hunter dreamed of the hart and of one other thing.

And while he dreamed Proud Rosalind grew glad and strong on her miraculous dole of money, that was always to her hand when she had need of it. Fear went out of her life, for she knew certainly now that she was in the keeping of unseen powers, and would not lack again. And little by little she too began to build a dream out of her pride; for she thought, I am all my fathers' house, and there will be no honor to it more except that which can come through me. And whenever tales went about of the fame of the fair young Queen of Bramber Castle, and the crowning of her name in this tourney and in that, or of the great lords and princes that would have died for one smile of her (yet her smiles came easily, and her kisses too, men said), Rosalind knit her brows, and her longing grew a little stronger, and she thought: If arrows and steel might once flash lightnings about my father's daughter, and cleave the shadows that have hung their webs about my fathers' hearth!

She now began to put by a little h.o.a.rd of pennies, for she meant to buy flax to spin the finest of linen for her body, and purple for sleeves for her arms, and scarlet leather for shoes for her feet, and gold for a fillet for her head; and so, attired at last as became her birth, one day to attend a tourney where perhaps some knight would fight his battle in her name. And she had no other thought in this than glory to her dead race. But her precious store mounted slowly; and she had laid by nothing but the money for the fine linen for her robe, when a thing happened that shattered her last foothold among men.

For suddenly all the countryside was alive with a strange rumor. Some one had seen a hart upon the hills, a hart of twelve points, fit for royal hunting. Kings will hunt no lesser game than this. But this of all harts was surely born to be hunted only by a maiden queen, for, said the rumor, it was as white as snow. Such a hart had never before been heard of, and at first the tale of it was not believed. But the tale was repeated from mouth to mouth until at last all men swore to it and all winds carried it; and amongst others some wind of the Downs bore it across the land from Arun to Adur, and so it reached the ears of Queen Maudlin of Bramber. Then she, a creature of quick whims, who was sated with the easy conquests of her beauty, yet eager always for triumphs to cap triumphs, devised a journey from Adur to Arun, and a great summer season of revelry to end in an autumn chase. "And," said she, "we will have joustings and dancings in beauty's honor, but she whose knight at the end of all brings her the antlers of the snow-white hart shall be known for ever in Suss.e.x as the queen of beauty; since, once I have hunted it, the hart will be hart-royal." For this, as perhaps you know, dear maidens, is the degree of any hart that has been chased by royalty.

However, before the festival was undertaken, the Queen of Bramber must needs know if the Arun could show any habitation worthy of her; and her messengers went and came with a tale of a n.o.ble castle fallen into ruins, but with its four-square walls intact, and a sward within so smooth and fair that it seemed only to await the coming of archers and dancers. So the Queen called a legion of workmen and bade them go there and build a dwelling in one part of the green court for her to stay in with her company. "And see it be done by midsummer," said she.

"Castles, madam," said the head workman, "are not built in a month, or even in two." "Then for a frolic we'll be commoners," said the Queen, "and you shall build on the sward not a castle, but a farm." So the workmen hurried away, and set to work; and by June they had raised within the castle walls the most beautiful farmhouse in Suss.e.x; and over the door made a room fit for a queen.

But alas for Proud Rosalind!

When the men first came she confronted them angrily and commanded them to depart from her fathers' halls. And the head workman looked at the ruin and her rags and said, "What halls, girl? and where are these fathers? and who are you?"--and bade his men get about the Queen's work. And Rosalind was helpless. The men from the Adur asked the people of the Arun about her, and what rights she had to be where she was. And they, being unfriendly to her, said, "None. She is a beggar with a bee in her bonnet, and thinks she was once a queen because her housing was once a castle. She has been suffered to stay as long as it was unwanted; but since your Queen wants it, now let her go." And they came in a body to drive her forth. But they got there too late. The Proud Rosalind had abandoned her conquered stronghold, and where she lived from this time n.o.body knew. She was still seen on the roads and hills now and again, and once as she pa.s.sed through Bury on washing-day the women by the river called to her, "Where do you live now, Proud Rosalind, instead of in a castle?" And Rosalind glanced down at the kneeling women and said in her clear voice, "I live in a castle n.o.bler than Bramber's, or even than Amberley's; I live in the mightiest castle in Suss.e.x, and Queen Maudlin herself could not build such another to live in."

"Then you'll doubtless be making her a great entertainment there, Proud Rosalind," scoffed the washers.

"I entertain none but the kings of the earth there," said Rosalind. And she made to walk on.

"Why then," mocked they, "you'd best seek one out to hunt the white hart in your name this autumn, and crown you queen over young Maudlin, Proud Rosalind."

And Rosalind stopped and looked at them, longing to say, "The white hart? What do you mean?" Yet for all her longing to know, she could not bring herself to ask anything of them. But as though her thoughts had taken voice of themselves, she heard the sharp questions uttered aloud, "What white hart, chatterers? Of what hunt are you talking?" And there in mid-stream stood Harding in his boat, keeping it steady with the great pole of the oar.

"Why, Red Boatman," said they, "did you not know that the Queen of Bramber was coming to make merry at Amberley?"

"Ay," said Harding.

"And that our proud lady Rosalind, having, it seems, found a grander castle to live in, has given hers up to young Maudlin?"

Harding glanced to and from the scornful tawny girl and said, "Well?"

"Well, Red Boatman! On Midsummer Eve the Queen comes with her court, and on Midsummer Day there will be a great tourney to open the revels that will last, so they say, all through summer. But the end of it all is to be a great chase, for a white hart of twelve points has been seen on the hills, and the Queen will hunt it in autumn till some lucky lord kneels at her feet with its antlers; and him, they say, she'll marry."

Then Harding once more looked at Rosalind over the water, and she flung back a look at him, and each was surprised to see dismay on the other's brow. And Harding thought, "Is she angry because SHE is not the Queen of the chase?" And Rosalind, "Would HE be the lord who kneels to Queen Maudlin?" But neither knew that the trouble in each was really because their precious secret was now public, and the white hart endangered.

And Rosalind's thought was, "It shall be no Queen's quarry!" And Harding's, "It shall be no man's but mine!" Then Harding plied his way to the ferry, and Rosalind went hers to none knew where; though some had tried vainly to track her.

In due course June pa.s.sed its middle, and the Queen rode under the Downs from Bramber to Amberley. And early on Midsummer Eve, while her servants made busy about the coming festival, Queen Maudlin went over the fields to the waterside and lay in the gra.s.s looking to Bury, and teased some seven of her court, each of whom had sworn to bring her the Crown of Beauty at his sword's point on the morrow. Her four maidens were with her, all maids of great loveliness. There was Linoret who was like morning dew on gra.s.s in spring, and Clarimond queenly as day at its noon, and Damarel like a rose grown languorous of its own grace, and Amelys, mysterious as the spirit of dusk with dreams in its hair.

But Maudlin was the pale gold wonder of the dawn, a creature of ethereal light, a vision of melting stars and wakening flowers. And she delighted in making seem cheap the palpable prettiness of this, or too robust the fuller beauty of that, or dim and dull the elusive charm of such-an-one. She would have scorned to set her beauty to compete with those who were not beautiful, even as a proved knight would scorn to joust with an unskilled boor. So now amongst her beautiful attendants, knowing that in their midst her greater beauty shone forth a diamond among crystals, she laughed at her seven lovers; and her four friends laughed with her.

"You do well, Queen Maudlin, to make merry," said one of the knights, "for I know none that gains so much service for so little portion. What will you give to-morrow's victor?"

"What will to-morrow's victor think his due?" said she.

The seven said in a breath, "A kiss!" and the five laughed louder than ever.

Then Maudlin said, "For so great an honor as victory, I should feel ashamed to bestow a thing of such little worth."

"Do you call that thing a little worth," said one, "which to us were more than a star plucked out of heaven?"

"The thing, it is true," said Maudlin, "has two values. Those who are over-eager make it a thing of naught, those from whom it is hard-won render it priceless. But, sirs, you are all too eager, I could scatter you baubles by the hour and leave you still desiring. But if ever I wooed reluctance to receive at last my solitary favor, I should know I was bestowing a jewel."

"When did Maudlin ever meet reluctance?" sighed one, the youngest.

A long shadow fell upon her where she lay in the gra.s.s, and she looked up to see the great form of Harding pa.s.sing at a little distance.

"Who is that?" said she.

"It must be he they call the Red Smith," said Damarel idly.

"He looks a rough, silent creature," remarked Amelys. And Clarimond added in loud and insolent tones, "He knows little enough of kissings, I would wager this clasp."

"It's one I've a fancy for," said young Queen Maudlin. "Red Smith!"

called she.

Harding turned at the sweet sound of her voice, and came and stood beside her among the group of girls and knights.

"Have you come from my castle?" said she, smiling up at him with her dawn-blue eyes.

"Ay," he answered.

"What drew you there, big man? My serving-wench?"

The Red Smith stared down at her light alluring loveliness.

"Serving-wenches do not draw me."

"What metal then? Gold?" Maudlin tossed him a yellow disc from her purse. He let it fall and lie.

"No, nor gold." His eyes traveled over her gleaming locks. "The things you name are too cheap," said he.

Maudlin smiled a little and raised herself, till she stood, fair and slender, as high as his shoulder.