The Forest Lovers Part 24

"I was in prison, lord."

He remembered then that she might have stayed in prison for all his help. He began to be ashamed of himself.

"Child," he said more gently, "I did wrong to be angry; but you must never thwart my plans. The boy loved you?"

"Few have loved me," said she, "but he loved me."

"Ah! Did he tell you so?"

"Yes, lord."

"And what did you say to that, Isoult?"

"I told him how love should be."

"So, so. And how do you think that love should be?"

"Thus, lord," said Isoult, looking to Vincent's heart.

Prosper turned pale. There were deeps, then, of which he had never dreamed.

"Isoult," he said, "did you love this boy who so loved you?"

She shook her head rather pitifully. "Ah, no!"

"But yet you told him how he should love you?"

"Nay, lord, but I told him how I should love."

"You must have studied much in this science, my child."

"I am Isoult la Desirous, lord."

Prosper turned away. There was much here that he did not understand, and that night before he went to sleep at her door he kissed her forehead--it would have been her hand if his dignity had dared--and then they prayed together as once in the forest.

Afterwards he was glad enough to remember this.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY'S LOVE

For, notwithstanding all that Isoult could urge (which was very little indeed), Prosper started next morning with a dozen men to scour the district for Maulfry. He refused point blank to take the girl with him, and after her rebuke and abas.e.m.e.nt of the night before, still more after the reconciliation on knees, she dared not plead overmuch.

He was a man and a great lord; she could not suppose that she knew all his designs--any of them, if it came to that. He must go his way-- which was man's way--and she must stop at High March nursing her heart--which was woman's way--even if High March proved a second Gracedieu and Isabel a more inexorable Maulfry. No act of her own, she resolved, should henceforward lead her to disobey him. Ah! she remembered with a hot flush of pain--ah! her disobedience at Gracedieu had brought all the mischief, Vincent's death all the anguish. Of course it had not; of course Maulfry had tricked her; but she was not the girl to spare herself reproaches. Her loyalty to Prosper took her easily the length of stultification.

So Prosper went; and it may be some consolation to reflect that his going pleased fourteen people at least. First it pleased the men he took with him; for Prosper, that born fighter, was never so humorous as when at long odds with death. Fighting seemed a frolic with him for captain; a frolic, at that, where the only danger was that in being killed outright you would lose a taste of the certain win for your side. For among the High March men there was already a tradition--G.o.d knows how these things grow--that Prosper le Gai and the hooded hawk could not be beaten. He was so cheerful, victory so light a thing.

Then his cry--_Bide the time_--could anything be more heartening?

Rung out in his shrill tones over the open field, during a night attack, say, or called down the darkening alleys of the forest, when the skirmishers were out of each other's sight and every man faced a dim circle of possible hidden foes? Pest! it tied man to man, front to rear. It tied the whole troop to the brain of a young demon, who was never so cool as when the swords were flying, and most wary when seeming mad. Blood was a drink, death your toast, at such a banquet.

And that accounts for twelve out of fourteen.

The thirteenth was Countess of Hauterive, Chatelaine of High March, Lady of Morgraunt, etc. A very few days inhabitancy where Master Roy was of the party, had a.s.sured this lady that the page must be ridded.

She wished him no ill: you do not wish ill to the earwig which you brush out of the window. Certainly if a boy had needs be stabbed by an Egyptian (who incontinent disappears and must be hunted) it were simpler Roy had fallen than the other. But she had no thought of amending the mistakes of Providence. Great ladies who are really great do not go to work to have inconvenient lacqueys stabbed. This at least was not the Countess of Hauterive's way. If Fulk de Breaute had not been her lover as well as her husband, if he had been (for instance) only her husband, she would have despised Earl Roger fully as much for the affair on Spurnt Heath. No. But she meant Roy to go, and here was her chance.

The fourteenth was Melot, a maid of the kitchen. This young woman, whose love affairs were at least as important in her own eyes as could possibly be those of the Countess her mistress (whom she had hardly ever seen), or of Prosper (whom she conceived as a s.e.xless abstraction, built for the purposes of eating and wearing steel), or of Roy (who, she a.s.sumed, had none)--this young woman, I say, was best pleased of them all. She was perhaps pretty; she had a certain exuberant charm, I suppose--round red cheeks, round black eyes, even teeth, and a figure--and was probably apt to give it the fullest credit. Roy's indifference, or reticence, or timidity (whichever it was) provoked her. There was either innocence, or backwardness, or _ennui_ to overcome: in any case, victory would be a triumph over a kitchenful of adepts, and here was a chance of victory. So far she owned to failure in all the essays she had made. She had tried comradeship, a bite of her apple--declined. She had put her head on his shoulder more than once--endured once, checked effectively by sudden removal of the shoulder and upsetting of the lady a final time.

She leaned over him to see what he was reading--he ceased reading.

Comradeship was a mockery; let her next try mischief. For happy mischief the pa.s.sionist must fume: he had looked at her till she felt a fool. She had tried innuendo--he did not understand it; languishing --he gladly left her to languish; coquetry elsewhere--he asked nothing better. She thought she must be more direct; and she was.

Isoult was in the pantry alone the second day of Prosper's quest. She stood at gaze out of the window, seeing nothing but dun-colour and drab where the sunlight made all the trees golden-green. Melot came in with a great stir over nothing at all, hemmed, coughed, sighed, heighoed. The block of a fellow stood fast, rooted at his window-- gaping. Melot was stung. She came to close quarters.

"Oh, Roy," she sighed, "never was such a laggard lad with me before.

Where hast thou been to school?"

Thereupon she puts hands upon the dunce, kisses him close, grows sudden red, stammers, holds off, has the wit to make sure--and bundles out, blazing with her news.

In twenty minutes it was all over the castle; Prosper's flag was higher, and Isoult's in the mire. In thirty it had come to my lady's dresser. Isoult, in the meantime, purely unconscious of anything but a sick heart, had wandered up into the ante-chamber, and was poring over a Book of Hours of the Blessed Virgin, leaning on her elbows at a table.

The dresser, having a.s.similated the news, was only too happy to impart to the Countess. This she did, and with more detail than the truth would warrant. Half hints became whole, backstairs whispers shouted in the corridors; and all went to swell the feast of sound in the lady's chamber. It would be idle to say that the Countess was furious, and moreover untrue, for that implies a scarlet face; the Countess grew as grey as a dead fire. She was, in truth, more shocked than angry, shocked at such a flagrant insult to her mere hospitality. But gradually, as the whole truth seemed to shape itself--the figure she made, standing bare as her love had left her before this satyr of a man; the figure of Prosper, tongue in the cheek, leering at her; the figure of Isoult, a loose-limbed wanton sleepy with vice--before this hideous trinity, when she had shuddered and cringed, she rose up trembling, possessed with a really imperial rage. And if ever a grievously flouted lady had excuse for rage, it was this lady.

Her rages were never storms, always frosts. These are the more deadly, because they give the enraged more time. So she said very little to her dresser. It came to this--"Ah! And where is the woman now?"

The dresser replied that when she had pa.s.sed by the woman was in the ante-chamber.

"Very well," said the Countess, "you may leave her there. Go." She pointed to a door which led another way. The dresser felt baulked of her just reward. But that was to come.

The Countess, still trembling from head to foot, took two or three swift turns across the room. The few gentle lines about her face were more like furrows; the skin was very tight over the lips and cheek- bones. She opened the door softly. Isoult was still in the ante- chamber, leaning over the Book of Hours, wherein she had found treated of the 'Seven Sorrowful Mysteries.' Her short hair fell curling over her cheeks; but she was boyish enough, to sight. The Countess went quickly behind her, and before the girl could turn about was satisfied of the amazing truth.

Isoult, blushing to the roots of her hair, stood up. Her troubled eyes tried at first to meet her accuser's stony pair. They failed miserably; almost any plight but this a girl can face. She hung her head, waiting for the storm.

"Why are you here, woman?" came sharp as sleet.

"I came to warn my lord, madam."

"What are you to him?"

Now for it;--no, never! "I am his servant, madam."

"His servant? You would say his--" The Countess spared nothing. Isoult began to rock. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed dry.

"Answer me, if you please," continued the Countess. "What are you to this man?"

Isoult had no voice.

"If you do not answer me I shall treat you for what I know you are.

You know the penalty. I give you three minutes."

There was no more then from the Countess for three minutes by the gla.s.s. The great lady stood erect, cold and white, seemingly frozen by the frost which burns you. The only sound in the room was the sobbing of the cowed girl, who also stood with hidden face and drooping knees, broken with sobs, but tearless. Ah, what under heaven could she do but as she did? Married to Prosper? How, when he had not declared it; had received her as his servant, and treated her as a servant? How, when she knew that the marriage of such as he to such as she was a disablement far more serious than the relationship thrown at her by the Countess? How, above all, when he had married her for charity, without love and without worship, could she bring scorn upon him who had dragged her out of scorn? Never, never! She must set her teeth hard, bow her head, and endure. The time was up.