The Forest Lovers Part 27

"You have indeed, my friend," Prosper replied. "Now I will do after mine."

To be short, he had Master Porges stripped, horsed, and stoutly flogged then and there. This he did by the simple device of calling up his agents by name, having the general's knack of judging men. Master Porges was a pursy man, but there were burlier than he; a couple of lean stablemen made good practice with the stirrup-leathers. At the end the entire herd were his slaves. One fetched his horse, another his shield and spear, three fought for the stirrup. A dozen would have shown him the way to the last scene of the martyrdom (for so, by vivid comparison, the common enthusiasm conceived it); but for this he chose the man who had unstrapped the girl. This worthy had not failed to recommend himself to notice on that score. He received his reward.

Prosper addressed him two requests. The first was, "Lead," and the man led him. The second was, "Go," and the man fled back. Prosper was left alone before a form of bruised bracken to make what he could of it.

He was a man of action, not given to reflections, not imaginative, essentially simple in what he thought and did. What he did was to dismount and doff his helmet. Next, with the b.u.t.t of his spear, he battered out the cognizance on his shield till no _fesse dancettee_ rippled there. "I will bear you next when I have won you," said he to the maimed arm. Bare-headed then he knelt before the form in the fern and prayed.

"Lord G.o.d of heaven and earth, now at last I know what the love of woman is. Let my wife learn of me the love of an honest man. And to that end, Father of heaven, suffer me to be made a man. _Per Christum Dominum_," etc.

At the end of his prayer he knelt on, and what drove in his brain I know not at all. The unutterable devotion of that meek and humble creature who called him master and lord, who had lain by his side, walked at his heels, sat at his knee, served at his table, put his foot to her neck (she so high in grace, he so shameless in brute strength!), bowed to a yoke, endured scorn, shame, bleeding, stripes, blindness, and the swoon like death--all this was something beyond thought: it was piercingly sweet, but it beat him down as a breath of flame. He fell flat on his face upon the black fern and blood, and so stayed crying like a boy.

When he got up he buckled on his helm, mounted, and rode straight for Goltres.

Master Porges knew an image-maker at March, and paid him a visit. He caused to be made a little stone figure of a lady, very beautiful, with a bra.s.s aureole round her victorious head. She was depicted trampling on a grinning knight--evidently the devil in one of his many disguises, though as like Prosper as description could provide.

Underneath, on the pedestal, ran the legend--_Sancta Isolda Dei Genetricis Ancilla Ora Pro n.o.bis_. He set this up in his chamber over a faldstool, and said three _Paters_ and nine _Aves_ before it daily. He reported that he derived unspeakable comfort from the practice, and for my part I believe that he did.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL

The charcoal-burner's convoy, bearing at once the evidence and the reward of his humanity, a battered lady on one a.s.s and her flayed friend on another, jogged leisurely through the forest glades. The time was the very top of spring, the morning soft and fair, but none of the party took any heed: the charcoal-burner because he was by habit too close to these things, Isoult because she was in a faint, the black ram because he had been skinned. When Isoult did finally lift her head and begin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes, had hounded her?

In this new blank discomfiture of hers, she was like one who has been taught patiently to climb by a gentle hand. The hand trusts her and lets go--down, down she falls, and from the mire at the bottom can see the sunny slopes above her, and the waiting guide stretched at rest until she come. The utter abas.e.m.e.nt of her state numbed her spirit; any other spirit would have been killed outright. But to her one thing remained, that dull and endless patience of the earth-born, poor clods without hope or memory, who from dwelling so hidden in the lap of the earth seem to win a share of its eternal sufferance. Your peasant will bow his back as soon as he can stand upright, and every year draws him nearer to the earth. The rheumatics at last grip him unawares, and clinch him in a gesture which is a figure of his lot. The scarred hills, the burnt plains, the trees which the wind cows and lays down, the flowers and corn, meek or glad at the bidding of the hour--the earth-born is kin to these, more plant than man. I have done ill if I have not thus expounded Isoult la Desirous, for without such knowledge of her you will hardly understand her apathy. She had been lapped so long on the knees of earth; her flights in the upper air had been so short, and her tumble with a broken wing so sharp, that she resumed the crouch, the bent knees, the folded arms, the face in hands of the earth-born, with hardly a struggle. If she had been meant for the air, she would be in the air; if she was meant to die a serf as she had lived, why, at the rate she was spending, death would be quick-- _ecco_! The word comes pat when you talk of such lives as hers, for the Italian peasant is the last of the earth-born, invincibly patient.

So Isoult, it seems, had the grace to know how far she had fallen, but not the wit to try for redemption once more. In accepting her tumble for a fate, I think it is clear that she was so far earthy as to be meek as a woodflower. Says she, If the rain fall, the dew rise, the sun shine, or wind blow mild, each in their due season--well, I will look up, laugh and be glad. You shall see how lovely I can be, and how loving. If the frost bind the ground in May, if you parch me with frozen wind, or shrivel me with heat, or let me rot in the soak of a wet June--well, I will bend my neck; you will see me a dead weed; I shall love you, but you shall hardly know it. If you are G.o.d, you should know; but if you are a man--ah, that is my misfortune, to love you in spite of common-sense.

Isoult believed she was abandoned by Prosper; she believed that she deserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having served her turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, who was hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could help being a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! So it was with her.

The charcoal burner had no curiosity. She hadn't been quite murdered; she was a boy; boys do not readily die. On the other side, they are handy to climb woodstacks, labour saving appliances--with the aid of an ash plant. And he was a clear fat sheep to the good. So he asked no questions, and made no remarks beyond an occasional oath. They slept one night in the thicket, rose early, travelled steadily the next day, and in course reached a clearing, where there were three or four black tents, some hobbled beasts, a couple of lean dogs, and a steady column of smoke, which fanned out into a cloud overhead. Here were the coal stacks; here also she found the colliers, half-a-dozen begrimed ruffians with a fortnight's beard apiece. No greetings pa.s.sed, nor any introduction of the white-faced boy shot into their midst. One of them, it is true, a red-haired, bandy-legged fellow, called Falve, looked over the newcomer, and swore that it was hard luck their rations should be shortened to fatten such a weed; but that was all for the hour.

At dusk, suppertime, there was a cross examination, held by Falve.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Roy."

"To h.e.l.l with your echoes. Where do you come from?"

"I don't know."

"What can you do?"

"As I am bid."

"Can you climb?"

"Yes."

"Cook?"

"Yes."

"Wink at a woman?"

"I see none."

"Fight?"

"At need."

"Take a licking?"

"I have learnt that."

"By G.o.d he has, I'll warrant," chuckled the man who had found her.

"Hum," said Falve. "Are you hungry, Roy?"

"No."

"Then do you cook the supper and I'll eat it. Do you see this little belt o' mine?"

"Yes."

"It's a terror, this belt. Don't seek to be nearer acquaint. Go and cook."

The ram proved excellent eating--tender and full of blood. Humane, even liberal, counsels prevailed over the sated a.s.sembly. The boy seemed docile enough, and likely; just a Jack of the build needful to climb the stacks of smouldering boughs, see to the fires, cord the cut wood and the burnt wood, lead the a.s.ses, cook the dinner, call the men --to be, in fact, what Jack should be. Jack he was, and Jack he should be called. Falve held out for a thrashing as a set-off; it seemed unnatural, he said, to have a belt and a boy at arms'-length. It was outvoted on account of the lateness of the hour, but only delayed. The beds were made ready, and Jack and his masters went to sleep.

The argument, which, holding as I do steadfastly with Socrates, I must follow whithersoever it runs, a.s.sures me that charcoal-burning is a grimy trade, and the charcoal-burners' Jack the blackest of the party; for if he be not black with coal-smoke, he will be black and blue with his drubbings. Isoult, in the shreds of Roy, grew, you may judge, as black and uncombed as any of the crew. She had not a three-weeks'

beard, but her hair began to grow faster; the roses in her cheek were in flower under the soot. Her hair curled and waved about her neck, her eyes shone and were limpid, her roses bloomed unawares; she grew sinewy and healthy in the kind forest airs. She worked very hard, ate very little, was as often beaten as not. All this made for health; in addition, she nursed a gentle thought in her heart, which probably accounted for as much as the open air. This was the news of Prosper's return to High March, and of the fine works he performed there in the hall. It came to her in a roundabout way through some pony drovers, who had it from Market Basing. The pietist at March, who made the image of Saint Isolda, may have spread the news. At any rate it came, it seeded in her heart, and as she felt the creeping of the little flower she blushed. It told her that Prosper had avenged her--more, had owned her for his. This last grain of news it was which held her seed. If he owned her abroad--amazing thought!--it must be that he loved her. As she so concluded, a delicate, throbbing fire fluttered in her side, and stole up to burn unreproved and undetected in her cheeks. Her reasoning was no reasoning, of course; but she knew nothing of knightly honour or the dramatic sense, so it seemed incontrovertible. At this discovery she was as full of shame as if she had done a sin. A sin indeed it seemed almost to be in her, that one so high should stoop to one so low, and she not die at once.

Sacrilege--should not one die rather than suffer a sacrilege to be thrust upon one? So Clytie may have felt, and Oreithyia, when they discerned the G.o.d in the sun, or wild embraces of the wind.

Yet the certainty--for that it was--coincided with her lurking suspicion of the virtue lying in her own strong love. It made that suspicion hardy; it budded, as I have said, and bore a flower. She could feel and fondle her ring again, and talk to it at night. "Lie snug," she would say, "lie close. He will come again and put thee in place, for such love as mine, which endureth all things, is not to be gainsaid." Thus she grew healthy as she grew full of heart, and gained sleek looks for any who had had eyes to see them.

Luckily for her, at present there was none. It is providence for the earth-born that their mother's lap soon takes furrows in which they may run. The charcoal-burners' life was no exception: hard work from dawn to dusk, food your only recreation, sleep your only solace. The weather is no new thing to you, to gape at and talk about. As well might the gentry talk about the joys of their daily bath. You have no quarrels, do no sins, for you have neither women nor strong waters in your forest tents. And if you knew how, you would thank G.o.d that you are incapable of thought, since a thinking vegetable were a lost vegetable. To think is to hope, and to hope is to sin against religion, which says, G.o.d saw that it was good. More than any reflecting man your earth-born believes in G.o.d, or the devil. It comes to much the same, if you will but work it out. He is a deist, his G.o.d an autocrat.

Isoult, the demure little freethinker, had another secret G.o.d--him of the iris wings. She loved, she was loved; she dared hope to be happy.

So far of the earth as to be humble, so far from it as to hope, she grew in the image of her G.o.d and was lovely; she remembered the precepts of her mother earth and was patient. Whenever she could she washed herself in the forest brooks; so woods and running water saw in her the blossoming rod. At these times she could have hymned her G.o.d had she known how; but Prosper had only taught her what his priests had taught him, that this was a world where every one is for himself, and to him that asks shall be given. To him that asks twice should be twice given. The consequence is that life is a great hunting, with no time for thanksgiving unalloyed. You must end your _Gloria_ in a whining pet.i.tion. Having, however, nothing to ask, she sat at these times in ecstasy inarticulate, her rags laid by for a season, looking long and far through the green lattice towards the blue, bent upon exploration of the joyful mysteries. A beam of the sun would fall upon her to warm her pale beauty and make it glow, the wind of mid-June play softly in her hair, and fold her in a child's embrace. Then again she would toy with her ring. "Ring, ring, he will come again, and put thee where thou shouldest be. Meantime lie still until he lie there instead of thee."

July heats stilled the forest leaves; the coal-stacks grew apace. The charcoal-burners' Jack had hair to his waist and had to hide it in his cap; the charcoal-burners' beards were six weeks old. There was talk of nights of a market in Hauterive, where Falve's mother kept a huckster's shop.

CHAPTER XXII