A cot at the side of a wood, and a woodchopper and his sister who
gathered faggots. The owner of the wood employing them, a miserly old
man in a manor house, kept little company, stirred little abroad,
neither hunted nor hawked. They had the still wood, the small cot.
Sometimes the steward of the place, sometimes a fellow servant dropped
in upon them, but by no means every day. Sound of axe, sound of falling
tree, sound of breaking branch and dead leaves underfoot and of March
wind. Hours of toil, then the cot, a fire on the hearth and homely fare.
Before he became smith he had been lad of the farm. A cot like this,
work like this, was but an old chime chiming again. She had had a
hardy, difficult childhood. It rose again upon her at the ruined farm,
in Wander forest. Life of the hand, life of the arm and shoulder was
not new; it was old.
Life of the passions; that was old.
Life of the awakening mind--life of the slowly kindling soul--life
passing away from old life--that had a divine newness.
The wind murmured and sought, and brought boughs to strike against
wall and roof. Fire burned on the hearth, light and shadow went around
the room. Some one knocked, then opened the door. “I am the charcoal
burner, I’ve got a child here who is ill!”
He had him in his arms a thin and gasping six-year-old.
“It’s his throat, and he’s burning in this cold wind! He’ll choke to
death.”
They laid him on a bed. The charcoal burner was big and black with a
black that brushed off. “What can ye do to help?”
They helped, but Morgen Fay the most, for she took the child upon her
knees and with long, fine fingers drew from his throat the stuff that
choked. Through the night she crooned to him, comforted him, and at the
dawn they wiled him to take a little broth that Richard made, after
which he slept, still in her arms.
“Leave him here till he is well.”
“I do not mind, if you do not mind. He will give ye a lot of trouble.”
“Leave him!”
They looked after this boy and he became a great light and play to
them. When he was better they took him with them, wrapped in a mantle,
into the wood and sat him in the sunshine. Diccon Dawn felled a tree
and hewed it into logs for the manor house, Alice Dawn brought
faggots, heaping together for the manor cart. When they must rest they
sat in the sun with the boy, and the great wind rushed and laughed and
clattered in the wood.
“Tell me a story!” said the boy. Richard told saint’s legend,
Christ-child story.
“Now you tell one!” Morgen told the story of the Great Good Elf.
Afterwards Richard said, “We could not have told those stories if we
were not getting well.”
In the cot at night, in the firelight, again the boy. “Tell me a
story--tell me a story!”
“All our lives to make these stories. All our lives of us all!”
“All!”
The child slept, the little flame sang, bough of tree struck the cot.
They sat and seemed to look down and seemed to look up a road that went
forever.
Wild flowers appeared. The child gathered them. Morgen wore a knot at
her bosom, Richard one in his cap. “Tell me a story--tell me a story!”
The charcoal burner came and took away his son. He gave rude thanks and
said that henceforth they were friends. They missed the lad until they
found that they had him still.
The wind pushed the high cloud ships and certain trees put on their
earliest touch of green. They rested in the wood from chopping and
gathering, and seated upon the felled tree, smelled the fragrance of
the world.
“Tell me a story--tell me a story--”
Again within the cot, and the wind fell at purple twilight, then
rose again roaring, and the flame bent this way and bent that. Quiet
together--still together.
“What is fire?”
“What is beauty?”
“What is music?”
April air, April wood. Rang the axe, bent and straightened the faggot
gatherer. Showers came up, but thick fir trees gave shelter. Rain
stopped. Being upon a little eminence in the wood they saw the great
bow, the seven-coloured bridge.
April rain, April greenery, April sunshine. The axe rang, the tree
fell. They rested from toil, leaning against the sunken mass, and
waiting so, became aware of the movement of horses, coming nearer
through the wood, and presently of voices. Sit quietly behind branches
of felled tree, and let all go by, at a little distance, five or six of
them!
But they came nearer and nearer, brushing through the wood, a hawking
party from a great house the other side a line of low hills, cutting
off a distance by leaving the road and crossing this piece of earth.
Nearer and nearer, and presently it was seen that they would pass the
felled tree. The woodchopper and the faggot gatherer sat still.
A big man, no longer young, with a beak of a nose and a waggish yet
formidable mouth, a quite young man and a young woman, and the other
two falconer and helper, carrying the hawks. They would go pacing by.
But the big man always spoke, sitting his big horse, to woodchoppers
and ditchers and thatchers, charcoal burners and the like! It was as
though one stopped to observe a robin or wren or blackbird. “Cousin
bird, what have you to say to the so-much-more-than-bird observing
you?” So now he drew rein and gave greeting.
“Hey, woodchopper, a fine day for felling!”
“Aye, it is, your honour!”
“You fell for old Master Cuddington? He should stir out, he should go
hawking! Is your mate there weeping or ugly that she sits turned away,
and her face in her hand?”
“It is her way. She means nothing.”
“She seems a fine lass--should not be in the dumps! Hey, my girl!--No?”
“_Robins and wrens must not be perverse_,” the big man said sharply.
“Lift your head, woman, or I shall think you’re hiding the plague!”
She turned upon him a twisted face. Brown she was and dressed after
another fashion than on a supper time in Middle Forest when the June
eve was cool and a fire crinkled on the hearth, and Ailsa brought more
wine, and Robert Somerville said, “Morgen Fay--and hath she not look of
the name?” Brown and dressed poorly and changed, and yet Sir Humphrey
Somerville stared.
“I’ve seen you before, but where? Oh, now I know where! Well, and is it
so!”
He laughed, he seemed about to descend from his horse and enter into
talk, and then to bethink himself, looking sidewise at his daughter
and her lover. At last it was, within himself, “I’ll think a while and
come quietly again. To-morrow, aye, to-morrow!” Aloud he said, “Flower
garden, and something about a witch--but all women are witches! And so
you live now on this side of the hills? And now I remember me something
of a letter from my cousin, and a great trouble you were in!”
He looked from her to Richard Englefield, but having no knowledge
there, saw only a brown-gold woodchopper. Taking a noble from his pouch
he spun it down upon the ground between them. “Old Cuddington pays
poorly. Seest it? Vanish not between to-day and to-morrow, Egyptian!”
He backed his big horse; he and his daughter and her lover and the
men with the hawks rode on through the wood. Drooping branches came
between; they were hidden, they were gone.
“He thinks that I could not nor would. But I can and do!”
She stood. “It is Somerville’s cousin. Once I feasted him in the house
by the river.”
They looked deep into the deep wood, they looked to the cot from which
came a tranquil blue feather of smoke. Then said Englefield, “It is
naught but travel again! Beyond this wood runs the wold for a long way,
then we drop to the sea and to fishing villages. Come, then! The day is
good, the night is starry.”
“Two Egyptians over the wold.”
“We have been together, I think, upon many wolds, in woods and havens,
in Egypt and elsewhere. Come then, Morgen!”
They left Master Cuddington’s axe and cords and cot and furnishing.
They took a loaf that she had baked and a bundle of clothing and what
coins were left from the smiths’ street, and at sunset fared forth.