The Ward of King Canute Part 35

Through the doors opening before the Jotun there came in a sudden buzz of laughing voices, while a breeze brought through the window a ringing of bells and a clarioning of approaching horns. Upon the girl in the shadow and the King on the dais, the sounds fell like the dissolving of a spell. She ran swiftly to the little door behind the tapestry and let herself out unseen, unheard. The King mounted the throne he had won and sat there in regal state, facing the throng of splendid courtiers trooping in to give him their wedding greetings.

Chapter x.x.xII. In Time's Morning

He wins who woos.

Ha'vama'l.

The hot glare of a July sun was on the stones of the Watling Street and July winds were driving hosts of battling dust-clouds along the highway, but in the herb garden of Saint Mildred's cool shadows lay over the dew-beaded gra.s.s and all was restfulness and peace. The voice of the girl who was following Sister Wynfreda from mint clump to parsley bed, from fennel to rue, was not much louder than the droning of the bees in the lavender.

"If it be true as you say,--" she was speaking with the pa.s.sionate bitterness of wounded youth,--"if it be true that in his place anyone would have believed what he believed, then is this a very hateful world and I want no further part in it."

Over the fragrant leaves which she was touching as fondly as if they had been children's faces, Sister Wynfreda gently shook her head. "Think not that it is altogether through the world's evil-heartedness, dear child.

Think rather that it is because mankind is not always brave and shrinks from disappointment, that it dares not believe in good until good is proved."

"I know that one dares not always believe in happiness," the girl conceded slowly, "for when my happiness was like a green swelling wave, white fear sprang from the crest of it and it fell--Sister, did that forebode my sorrow?"

Awhile, the nun's eyes widened and paled as eyes that see a vision, but at last she bowed her head to trace a cross upon her breast. "Not so; it is G.o.d's wisdom," she said, "else would the world be so beautiful that we would never hunger after heaven."

Mechanically, Randalin's hands followed hers through the holy sign; then she clasped them before her to wring them in impatient pain. "That is so long to go hungry, Sister! I shall be past my appet.i.te." Dropping down beside the other, her slim young fingers began to imitate the gnarled old ones as they weeded and straightened. "I wonder at it, Sister Wynfreda, that you do not urge me to creep in with you. A year ago, you wanted it when I wanted it not; but now when I am willing, you hold me off."

"Is it clear before your mind that you are willing, my daughter?" the nun asked gently. As she drew herself to her feet with the aid of a bush, the cramping of her feeble stiffened muscles contracted her face in momentary pain, but her eyes were serene as the altar lamps. "It lies upon you to remember, little sister, that those who would serve G.o.d around the altar must not go thither only because the world has mistreated them and they would cast it off to avenge the smart. She who puts on the yoke of Christ must needs do so because it is the thing she would desire of all, were all precious things spread out for her choosing. Can you look into my eyes and say that it would be so with you?"

Where she knelt before her, the girl suddenly threw her arms around the woman and hid her face in the faded robes. The frail hand stroked the dark hair affectionately. "Think not that I would upbraid you with it, child as dear as my own heart. When the Power that took you from me led you back again, and I read what G.o.d's fingers had written on your face that before was like a lineless parchment, I could not find it in my mind to wish you otherwise. I felt only shame for the weakness of my faith, and joy past all telling."

Under the soothing hand, Randalin's sobs slowly ceased; when at last she raised her wet eyes there was no longer rebellion in them but only youth's measureless despair. "Sister, now as always, I want to do what you would have me--but I am so full of grief! Must I go back to Avalcomb and begin all over again? It seems to me that my life stretches before me no more alluringly than yonder dusty road, that runs straight on, on, over vast s.p.a.ces but always empty."

The beauty that had been Sister Wynfreda's hovered now about her mouth as fragrance around a dead rose. Her gaze was on a branch above them where a little brown bird, calling plaintively, was slipping from her nest. Over the wattled edge, two tiny brown heads were peeping like fuzzy beech-nut rinds. "I wonder," she said, "what those little creatures up there will think when a few months hence the blue sky becomes leaden, such that no one of them ever before recollected it so dark, and the sun that is wont to creep to them through the leaves has gone out like a candle before the winter winds? By reason of their youth, I suppose they will judiciously conclude with themselves that there is never going to be any blue sky again, that their lives will stretch before them in a dark-hued stress of weather, empty of all save leafless trees and frozen fields. My fledgeling, will they not be a little ashamed of their short-sightedness when the spring has brought back the sun?"

The girl's lips parted before her quickening breath, and the old nun smiled at her tenderly as she moved away with her hands full of the green symbols of healing. "Settle not the whole day of your life at its morning, most dear child, but live it hour by hour," she said. "If you would be of use now, go gather the flowers for the Holy Table, and when themselves have drawn in holiness from the spot, then shall you bring them to the sick woman over the hill."

"Yes, Sister," the girl said submissively. But when she had crossed the daisied gra.s.s and opened the wicket gate and came out into the fragrant lane, something seemed to divide her mind with the roses, for though she sent one glance toward the hedge, she sent another to the spot beyond--where the lane gave out upon the great Street to the City--and after she had walked a little way toward the flowers, she turned and walked a long way toward the road, until she had come where her eyes could follow its white track far away over the hills.

"I wonder if I shall ever hunger for heaven as I hunger for the sight of him," she murmured as she gazed.

But whatever the valleys might hold, the hillsides showed her nothing; sighing, she turned back. "It seems to me," she said, "that if we could have little tastes of heaven as we went along, then would there still be enough left and the road would seem much shorter." Sighing, she set to work upon the roses, that had twined themselves in a kindly veil over the bushes.

Standing so, it happened that she did not see the horseman who was just gaining the crest of the nearest hill between her and the City. The wind being from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the horse had turned from the glare of the sun into the shadow of the fern-bordered lane. The first she knew of it, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure riding toward her along the gra.s.s-grown path.

As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she leaned toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally natural, as he leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and half averted her face, flickering red and white like the blossoms she was clasping to her breast.

He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of gra.s.s still between them, wand it soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any confident ease in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His voice was greatly troubled as he spoke: "Never can I forgive myself for having wounded you, sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive me, because I knew not what I did and because I have suffered so sorely for it."

"_You_ have suffered," she repeated with a little accent of bitterness.

"I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!" Hesitation gave way before a warmth of reproach. "For a man to know that he has wounded what he would have died to shield--that he has wronged where he would have given his life to honor--that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,--what else is that but suffering?"

It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune among love's spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in n.o.blest conciliation: "Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear one." Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,--and the difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. "Thus then do I ask you to give me back your love," he said gently,--and would have said more but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.

"It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me that--that I have no right to be angry with you--" She broke off, as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all else. "Why are your cheeks so hollow?" she demanded. "And so gray--as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?"

He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for him, even while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more than the fatigue of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food, perhaps, as he had been somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep because of--

But she was a warrior's daughter, and she would not be put off. Coming close to him, she pulled aside the dusty cloak, hot as a live coal in the glare of the day, and there--behold!--there were blood stains on the breast of his blue kirtle. Forgetful of everything else, she flung her arms around him as though to shield him. "Sebert, you are wounded! What is it?"

Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face had grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the reaction to answer her as gravely as possible: "It is Rothgar Lodbroksson, whom I met coming from the City as I was journeying back from my errand in Northampton. Little affection has ever pa.s.sed between us, and this time something more than usual seemed to have stirred him against me, for--"

"He tried to kill you!" The words were not a question but a breathless a.s.sertion as she remembered the Jotun's last threat.

"He tried to kill me," the Marshal a.s.sented quietly. "And his blade did manage to pierce my mail; he is a giant in strength as in other things.

But it cut no more than flesh; and after that, Fortune wheeled not toward him."

"You slew him!" Her lips were white as she gasped it, but he knew now that it was no love for the Jotun that moved her, and he answered promptly to her unspoken thought: "No, sweet,--for the King's sake, I spared him. Before this, his men have taken him aboard his ship and England is rid of him."

Murmuring broken phrases of thanksgiving, she stood holding the cloak she had grasped, but he dreaded too much the moment of her awakening to await its coming inactive. Slipping his arms around her, he began to speak swiftly, the moment her silence gave him an opening.

"Never did I blame Rothgar much for his enmity against me, and now I thank him for this cut as for a gift, for through it I know that at least you have not outlawed me from your love. Dear one, as you are not unkind to so slight a thing as this wound in my flesh, so neither be without pity for the one that is so much deeper, in my heart! As the scratch stayed your anger for a while, so, in the gentleness of love, let this which is mortal stay it for all time."

With his arms around her, she could not shrink very far away,--nor was it seen that she tried to,--but all at once her words came in uneven rushes: "How can I hold anger against you when, with every breath, my lips sigh for your kisses? Yet let no one wonder at it that I am frightened... You cannot conceive what a lurking place for terrors the world looks to me! Never, I think, shall I see men sitting together that I shall not suspect them of having murder in their hearts. Never shall I see two friends clasp hands but my mind will run forward to a time when they shall part in wrath and loneliness. Nay, even of the sound of my own voice I am afraid, lest whomsoever is hearing it--for all that he speak me fair--be twisting the words in his mind into evils I have not dreamed of. Sebert, I do not reproach you with it! I think it all the fault of my own blunders,--and therein I find a new terror. That one should suffer for wrong-doing is to be looked for, but if one is to be dealt with so unsparingly only for making mistakes, who knows where his position is or what to expect? Oh, my best friend, make me brave or I am likely to die only through fearing to live! With my ignorance my boldness went from me, until now my courage is lowly as a willow leaf. Love, make me brave again!" Trusting, in her very declaration of distrust, she clung to him to save her from herself.

It was in the briar-p.r.i.c.ked fingers, which he was pressing against his cheek, that he found his answer. Suddenly he spread them out in his palm before her, laughing with joyful lightness. "Randalin, the thorns wounded your hands the while that you stripped yonder hedge, but did you stop for that? If I can prove to you that all these dark days you have been but plucking roses, can you not bravely bear with the p.r.i.c.ks?"

Putting her gently from him, he gathered up the spoils she had let fall, picking from among them with great care the fairest of either kind, while she, catching his mood, watched him April-faced. "This," he said gaily, "is the red rose of my heart. Battle-fields lay between us and tower walls, and the way was long and hard to find, yet can you deny, my elf, that you came in and plucked it and wore it away in your hair,--to keep or to cast aside as pleased you?"

Smiles and tears growing together, she caught the blossom from him and pressed it to her lips. "I will wear it in my bosom," she answered, "for my breast has been empty--since the day I saw you first."

Smiling, he held out the white rose, but his mood had deepened until now he looked down upon her as he had looked down upon her in the moonlit forest. "This, beloved, is the symbol of my faith," he said. "Your eyes took it from me that day at even-song. I hold it the dearer of the two, for with it goes my honor that is as stainless as its petals. It is worth more than life to me,--is it not worth some p.r.i.c.ks to you?"

She took it from him reverently, to lay it beside the other, and as her face was too proud for fear so was it too tender for jesting. "I am more honored," she told him, "than Canute by his crown; and I will live as bravely to defend them."

But as he would have caught her to him, she leaned back suddenly to stretch a hand toward a dark-robed figure standing under the moss-grown arch, and her pride melted into a laugh of breathless happiness. "Sister Wynfreda, you were very right," she called softly, "the world can be so beautiful that one has no hunger for heaven."