The Forest Lovers Part 43

He went headlong down the slope of the ground; but before anything more welcome he caught the music of the brook in the bottom.

There was a gap in the trees just there; the moon swam in the midst large and golden. Then at last he saw what he wanted, and knew that the hour had come.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

SALOMON IS DRIVEN HOME

Galors, too, knew that the hour had come; but his spirit came up to meet it, and he made a push for it. He was over the brook; if he could top the ridge he would have the advantage he had a year ago, which this time he swore to put to better use. The girl knew his thoughts as she had known the accolade of the thundering hoofs behind them. She would have thrown herself if the steel trap had loosed ever so little; as it was, she fluttered like a rag caught in a bush; the filmy body was what Galors held, the soul shrilled prayers to the man's confusion. He could not stay her lips; they moved, working against him, as he knew well. "Mother of G.o.d, send him, send him, send him!"

It was ill fighting against a girl's soul, it slacked his rein and drugged his heel. By G.o.d, let the boy come and be d.a.m.ned; let him fight! "Mother of G.o.d, send, send, send!" breathed Isoult. The horse below them shuddered, failed to come up to the rein, bowed his head to the jerked spur. Galors left off spurring, and slackened his rein.

Though he would not look behind him he heard the plash of the ford, heard also Prosper's low, "Steady, mare, hold up!" Prosper was over; Galors halfway up the hill. It would be soon.

The black and white gained hand over hand; the red and green felt him come. The soul of Isoult hovered between them. Black and white drew level; red and green held on. Side by side, spears erect and tapering into the moon, plumes nodding, eyes front, they paced; the soul of Isoult took flight, the body crouched in the steel's hug. The gleam of the white wicket-gates caught their master's eye; they were risen in judgment against him. _Entra per me_ was to play him false. This trifling thing unnerved him till it seemed to speak a message of doom.

But doom once read and accepted, nerve came back. By G.o.d, he would die as he had lived, strenuously, seeking one thing at a time! But to be killed by his chosen arm, overshrilled by his own shout--that sobered him, little of a sentimentalist as he was. As for love-lorn Prosper, he had still less sentiment to waste. True, he had not chosen his arms, his motto had been found for him by his ancestors--they were cut-and-dried affairs, so much clothing to which Galors at this moment served as a temporary peg. Sweet Saviour! the Much-Desired was near him, close by. He could have touched her head. She never moved to look at him; he knew so much without turning his own head. And he knew further that she knew him there. The soul of Isoult, you see, had taken wings. Thus they gained the ridge and halted. Backing their beasts, they were face to face, and each looked shrewdly at the other, waiting who should begin the game.

Then it was that Isoult suddenly sat up and looked at Prosper. He could not read her face, but knew by her stiff-poised head that she was quivering. He said nothing, but made a motion, a swift jerk with his head, to wave her out of the way. Galors responded by first tightening, finally relaxing, his hold upon her waist. She slipt down from the saddle, and stood hesitating what to do. She had waited for this moment so long, that the natural thing had become the most unnatural of all. Prosper never glanced at her, but kept his eyes steadily on Galors. The times--in his mannish view--were too great for lovers. Isoult stept back into the shadows.

The two men at once saluted in knightly fashion, wheeled, and rode apart. The lists were a long alley between the pines, all soft moss and low scrub of whortleberry and heather. Galors had the hill behind him, but no disadvantage in that unless he were pushed down it; the place was dead level. They halted at some thirty yards' interval, waiting. Then Prosper gave a shout--_"Bide the time!" "Entra per me!"_ came as a sombre echo; and the two spurred horses flung forward at each other.

Each spear went true. Prosper got his into the centre of Galors'

shield, and it splintered at the guard. Galors' hit fair; but Prosper used his trick of dropping at the impact, so that the spear glanced off over his shoulder. Galors recovered it and his seat together. It would seem that Prosper had taught him some civility by this, for he threw his lance away as soon as the horses were free of each other.

Both drew their swords. Then followed a bout of wheeling and darting in, at which Prosper had clear advantage as the lighter horseman on the handier horse. Galors' strength was in downright carving; Prosper's in his wrist-play and lightning recovery. He, moreover, was cool, Galors hot. At this work he got home thrice to the other's once, but that once was for a memory, starred the shoulder-piece and bit to the bone. Left arm luckily. Prosper made a feint at a light canter, spurred when he was up with his man, and, as his horse plunged, got down a back-stroke, which sent Galors' weapon flying from his hand. He turned sharply and reined up. Galors dismounted slowly, picked up his sword, and went to mount again. He blundered it twice, shook the blood out of his eyes, tried again, but lurched heavily and dropped. He only saved himself by the saddle. Prosper guessed him more breathed than blooded.

"Galors," said he, "we have done well enough for the turn. Rest, and let me rest."

"As you will," said Galors thickly.

The two men sat facing each other on either side of the way. Galors unlaced his helm and leaned on his elbows, taking long breaths.

Prosper unlaced his; and then followed a lesson to Isoult in warfare, as he understood it. The girl had run down the hill-side to the brook, so soon as she saw they must give over. She now came back, bearing between her hands a broad leaf filled with water. This she brought to her lord. Prosper smiled to her.

"Take it to Galors, Isoult, whom we must consider as our guest," he whispered.

She turned at once and went dutifully, with recollected feet and bosom girt in meekness, to give him the cold water cupped in her palms.

Galors drank greedily, and grunted his thanks. As for Prosper, he praised men and angels for a fair vision.

She came back after another journey to feed her lover, and afterwards stood as near to him as she dared. Galors, the alien, looked ever at the ground.

"Galors," said Prosper presently, "how do you find my harness?"

"It has served me its turn," he answered.

"That also I can say of yours," replied Prosper, with a little laugh; "for it has taken me into places where, without it, I should have found a strait gate in. For that I can thank you more than for the head-ache and cold bath at Goltres."

"Ha!" said the other, "that was a sheer knock. I thought it had finished you, to be plain. But do not lay it to my door. I fight truer than that."

"Truly enough you have fought me this night," Prosper allowed heartily, "and I ask no better. But will you now tell me one thing about which I have been curious ever since our encounter in this place a year ago?"

"What is it?"

"Your arms--the blazon--do you bear them as of right?"

"I bear them by the right a fighter has. They have carried me far, and done my work."

"They are not of your family?"

"My family? Messire, you should know that a monk carries no arms. My family, moreover, was not knightly, till I made it knightly."

"The arms you a.s.sumed with your new profession?"

"I did."

"May I know whence you took them?"

"No, I cannot tell you that. They are the arms of a man now dead, Salomon de Montguichet"

"They are the arms," said Prosper slowly, "of a man now dead. I saw him dead, and helped to bury him. I knew not then how he died, though I have thought to be sure since. But you are wrong in one thing. The bearer of those arms was not Salomon de Montguichet."

"It is you who are wrong, Messire. It is beyond doubt; and the proof is that on the shield are the _guichets_, taken from the name."

"Galors, the name was taken from the _guichets_, and the _guichets_ from Coldscaur in the north. The man's name was Salomon de Born."

Galors gave a dry sob, and another, and another. He threw up his arms, twisting with the gesture of a man on the rope. Prosper and Isoult rose also, Prosper pale and hard, the girl wide-eyed. Galors seemed to tear at himself, as if at war with a fiend inside him. Prosper stepped forward; you would not have known his voice.

"Man," he said, "our account is not yet done. But I know what I know.

If you have accounts to settle, settle them now. I will bear you company and wait for you where you will."

The words steadied Galors, sobered and quieted him. He began to mutter to himself. "G.o.d hath spoken to me. Out of my own deeds cometh His judgment, and out of my own sowing the harvest I shall reap. _Entra per me_, saith G.o.d." He turned to Prosper. "Sir, I accept of your allowance. I will not take you far. One more thing I will ask at your hands, that you give me back my own sword--Salomon's sword. After a little you shall have it again."

"I will do it," said Prosper, knowing his thought.

They changed swords. Prosper set Isoult on his horse and himself walked at her stirrup. The three of them moved forward without another word given or exchanged. Galors led the way.

Instead of following the line of the chase, which had been north, they now struck east through the heavy woodland. So they went for some three hours. It must have been near midnight, with a moon clear of all trees, when they halted at a cross-ride which ran north and south.

Before them, over the ride, rose a thick wall of pine-stems, so serried that there was no room for a horse to pa.s.s in between them.

Isoult started, looked keenly up and down the ride, then collected herself and sat quite still. Prosper took no notice of anything.

"Prosper," said Galors quietly, "you will wait here for me. You know that I shall return. It will be within half-an-hour from now."

"Good. I shall be here."

Galors dismounted and plunged into the wall of pines; they seemed to move and fold him in their mazes, and nothing spoke of him thereafter but the sound of his heavy tread on dry twigs. When this was lost an immense stillness sat brooding.

Neither Prosper nor Isoult could speak. Her presence was to him a warm consolation, to be apprehended by flashes in the course of a long battle with black and heavy thoughts; her also the pause (more fateful than the battle it had interrupted) affected strangely, the more strangely because she did not know the whole truth. I may say here that Prosper never told her of it; nor did she ask it of him. It was the one event of their lives, joint and disjoint, upon which they were always as dumb as now when they thought apart. Thoughtful apart though they were, they felt together. Prosper's hand stole upwards from his side; Isoult's drew to it as metal to magnet; the rest of that heavy hour they pa.s.sed hand-in-hand. So children comfort each other in the dark.

Very faint and far off a solitary cry broke the vast dearth of the night. It rose like an owl's hooting, held, shuddered, and then died down. Prosper's clasp on the girl's hand suddenly straightened; it held convulsively while the call held, relaxed when it relaxed. Then the former hush swam again over the wood, and so endured until, after intolerable suspense, they heard the heavy tread of Galors de Born.