The Forest Lovers Part 4

So love made the man mad, and spread and possessed him. Contest goaded Galors: action was his meat and dominion what he breathed; by resisting she had made the end more sure. By her imprisoned wrists he drew her in, and when she was so close that her head was almost upon his breast, he breathed over her. "A mitred abbey have I trampled down for your love; yes, and to be bishop of a see. Therefore you must come."

She fell to whining and entreaty, white to the lips and dry with fear.

All that she could say was, "I am bad. I am bad, but not so bad! Never ruin me, Dom Galors." Then it was that she heard the voice of Prosper singing afar off on the heath. Prosper sang--

"What if my metal Be proved as high as a hawk's in good fettle!

Then you shall see The world my fee, And the hearts of men for my Seigniory."

And the girl thought to herself, "Help cometh!" and changed the voice of her grief and the beating of her heart. By this the guile a woman has always by her tongue had play: she could talk more gently to her gaoler, and beg a little time--a short hour or so--to plan and arrange their affairs. He thought her won and grew very tender; he kissed her hands many times, called her his dear heart, became, in a word, the clumsy gallant he claimed to be. All this too she endured: she began to gabble at random, sprightly as a minion, with all the shifts of a girl in a strait place ready at command. Her fear was double now: she must learn the trend of the singer and his horse, and prevent Galors from hearing either. This much she did. The sound came steadily on.

She heard the horse's hoofs strike on a flint outside the quarry, she heard Prosper, singing softly to himself. Her time had come. She sprang at arm's-length from Galors and called out, "Help, for charity!" with all her might.

Prosper started, drew his sword, and headed his horse for the quarry.

In the mouth of it he reined up to look about him. He was sure of his direction, but not of his way, "Help is here!" he cried with his sword on high and red plumes nodding. Air and the light of the sun seemed to follow him, as if he had cut a slit in a shroud and let in the day.

Then it was that Isoult found strength to shake free from her enemy, to run to Prosper, to clasp his knee, to babble broken words, entreaties for salvation, and to stoop to his foot and kiss it.

"What is all this about, my child?" asked Prosper wondering.

"Oh" cried the girl, "my lord! the monk seeks to do me a wrong, and a shame greater than all!"

Prosper looked deeper into the quarry. There he saw Galors, the white monk, who stood fixed, biting his nails keenly there. Then he laughed, saying, "I cannot fight a monk," and sheathed his sword. He did not love monks, none of his house did. He had seen the new gallows, could measure the build of the fellow in the quarry; and though he could not plumb the girl's soul through her misty eyes, he could read her shaking lips and clinging hands; he could see, and be shocked to see, how young she was to be acquainted with grief, and with sin how likely familiar. The hint of the thing revolted him; he dared not leave her there.

"See here, child," said he, "I will set you before me, and we will ride together for a while. Perhaps the evening chills will temper the monk; but if not, I am to lodge at his abbey this night, and may prepare that for him which will cool him. Will you come up to me?"

The ghost of a smile hovered over her white drawn face for a minute.

"I will go where you will take me, my lord," said she.

"Come up with you then," he replied. He stooped there and then, took her below the arms, and lightly swung her into the saddle before him.

There she sat, modern fashion, with his sword arm for her stay. "I should like to read that hulk a lesson," said her protector wistfully, "but I doubt he will have it before night. Oh, let him hang!" So he turned and rode out of the quarry on to the heath.

Galors stood a long time in the place where they left him, drawing blood from his bitten fingers. Darkness gathered fast with a storm of wind and rain. Nevertheless he stayed on; and night came down to find him still there.

CHAPTER VI

THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE

He had to talk, and as the girl gave him no help, Prosper found himself asking questions and puzzling out the answers he got, trying to make them fit with the facts. He was amazed that one so delicately formed should go barefooted and bareheaded, clad in torn rags. To all his questions she replied in a voice low and tremulous, and very simply--that is to say, to such of them as she would answer at all. To many--to all which touched upon Galors and his business with her in the quarry--she was as dumb as a fish. Prosper was as patient as you could expect.

He asked her who she was, and how called. She told him--"I am Matt-of- the-Moors child, and men call me Isoult la Desirous."

"That is a strange name," said he. "How came you by such a name as that?"

"Sir," said Isoult, "I have never had any other; and I suppose that I have it because I am unhappy, and not at peace with those who seek me."

"Who seeks you, Isoult?"

To that she gave no reply. So Prosper went on.

"If many sought you, child," he said, "you were rightly called Isoult la Desiree, but if you, on the other hand, sought something or somebody, then you were Isoult la Desirous. Is it not so?"

"My lord," said Isoult, "the last is my name."

"Then it must be that you too seek something. What is it that you seek, that all the t.i.thing knows of it?"

But she hung her head and had nothing to say. He went on to speak of Galors, to her visible disease. When he asked what the monk wanted with her, he felt her tremble on his arm. She began to cry, suddenly turned her face into his shoulder, and kept it there while her sobs shook through her.

"Well, child," said he, "dry your tears, and turn your face to such light as there is, being well a.s.sured of this, that whatever he asked of you he did not get, and that he will ask no more."

"I fear him, I fear him," she said very low--and again, "I fear him, I fear him."

"Drat the monk," said Prosper, laughing, "is he to cut me out of a compliment?"

Whereupon she turned a very woebegone and tearful face up to his. He looked smilingly down; a sudden wave of half-humbrous pity for a thing so frail and amazed swam about him; before he knew he had kissed her cheek. This set her blushing a little; but she seemed to take heart, smiled rather pitifully, and turned again with a sigh, like a baby's for sleep.

The night gathered apace with a chill wind; some fine rain began to fall, then heavy drops. Gradually the wind increased, and the rain with it. "Now we shall have it," said Prosper, sniffing for the storm.

He covered Isoult with his cloak, folded it about her as best he could, and tucked it in; she lay in his arms snug enough, and slept while he urged his horse over the stubbed heath. The water hissed and ran over the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered abbey," he thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered has too many. In the first case, therefore, Holy Thorn would leave her at the gate, and in the second, that is where I myself would let her stay. So it seems that she must needs have a wet skin." He felt carefully about the sleeping child; the cloak kept her dry and warm as a toast. She was sound asleep. "Good Lord!" cried Prosper, "it's a pity to disturb this baby of mine. Saracen and I had better souse.

Moreover, I make no nearer, by all that appears, to river Wan or Holy Thorn. Come up, horse; keep us moving."

The stream he had followed he now had lost. It was pitchy dark, with a most villainous storm of rain and wind. Saracen caught the infection of his master's doubts; he stopped short, and bowed his head to snuff the ground. Prosper laughed at the plight they were both in, and looked about him, considering what he should do. Very far off he could see a feeble light flickering; it was the only speck of brightness within his vision, and he judged it too steady for a fen-flame.

Lodging of some sort should be there, for where there is a candle there is a candlestick. This was not firelight. To it he turned his tired beast, and found that he had been well advised. He was before a mud-walled hovel; there through the horn he saw the candle-flame. He drew his sword and beat upon the door. For answer the light was blown swiftly out, and the darkness swam about him like ink.

"Scared folk!" he laughed to himself, hammering at the door with a will.

Then Isoult stirred on his arm and awoke with a little whimper, half dreaming still, and not knowing where she was. She sat up in the saddle dazed with sleep.

"The night is wild," said Prosper, "and I have found us the shadow of a shade, but as yet we lack the substance." Then he set-to, pounding at the door again, and crying to those within to open for the sake of all the saints he could remember.

Isoult freed herself from the cloak, and slid down from her seat in the saddle. Putting her face close to the door she whistled a low note. The candle was re-lit, many bolts were withdrawn; finally the door opened a little way, and an old man put his head through the c.h.i.n.k, staring out into the dark.

"G.o.d's life, you little rip," said the anxious rogue, "you gave us a turn!"

Isoult spoke eagerly and fast, but too low for Prosper to hear what she said. The man was in no mind to open further, and the more he speered at the horseman the less he seemed to like it. Nevertheless, after a time the girl was let into the hut, and the door slammed and bolted as before. Between the shocks of the storm Prosper could now hear a confusion of voices--Isoult's, low, even, clear and quick; the grating comments of the old rogue who kept the door, and another voice that trembled and wailed as if pa.s.sion struggled with the age in it, to see which should be master. Once he thought to catch a fourth--a brisk man's voice, with laughter and some sort of authority in it, which seemed familiar; but he could not be sure about this. In the main three persons held the debate.

After a long wrangle it seemed that the women were to have their way.

Again the door-bolts were drawn, again the door opened by the old man, and this time opened wide. With bows lower than the occasion demanded, Prosper was invited to be pleased to enter. He saw to his horse first, and made what provision he could for him in an outhouse. Then he stooped his head and entered the cottage.

He came directly into a bare room, which was, you may say, crouched under a pent of turves and ling, and stank very vilely. The floor was of beaten clay, like the walls; for furniture it had a table and bench. Sooty cobwebs dripped from the joists, and great spiders ran nimbly over them; there were no beds, but on a heap of rotting skins in one corner two rats were busy, and in another were some dry leaves and bracken. There was no chimney either, though there was a peat fire smouldering in what you must call the hearth. The place was dense with the fog of it; it was some time, therefore, before Prosper could leave blinking and fit his eyes to see the occupants of his lodging....

Isoult, he saw, stood in the middle of the room leaning on the table with both her hands; her bead was hanging, and her hair veiled all her face. Near her, also standing, was the old man--a st.u.r.dy knowing old villain, with a world of cunning and mischief in his pair of pig's eyes. His scanty hair, his beard, were white; his eyebrows were white and altogether monstrous. He blinked at Prosper, but said nothing. The third was a woman, infinitely old as it seemed, crouched over the fired peats with her back to the room. She never looked up at all, but muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling with comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother Bonaccord of Lucca.

"G.o.d save you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us--hey? But a shakedown under a snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out of my own country. What a port for what a night--hey?"

Prosper nodded back a greeting as he looked from one to another of these ill-a.s.sorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her!

how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. Morgraunt had already taught him an odd thing or two; no doubt it was Morgraunt's way.

The old man set bread and onions on the table, with some sour red wine in a jug. "Sit and eat, my lord, while you may," he said.