ALLEDA AND ALARAN
The mighty oak forest, the mighty forest of beech and fir and chestnut,
birch and ash, stretched north and south and east and west. Clearings
there were, but the clearings soon dipped into forest. The clearings
were rifts in a clouded heaven, sunny patches on a shadowed ocean. Fine
threads of light, rude roads, tracks, paths, tied clearing to clearing.
Timber houses rose from the open spaces. Sometimes there rose only one
house, sometimes two or three together, more seldom quite a number
grouped in one great clearing. The houses were of great untrimmed logs,
the roofs of thatch. They were as rude as the time in the northern
forest; a few houses, many huts. Fields there were, irregularly sown,
and great meadow stretches by the streams for the numerous cattle. From
the air an eagle might see that all these clearings, great and small,
made a constellation, and that there were other constellations linked to
the first by some type of road driven across leagues of forest. Taken
all together, they indicated a tribe or nation of northern folk. Off in
the rounding mist where the forest tracks broke, beyond leagues of
smooth, succeeding forest, abode other and similar nations. And all the
tribes and nations, though they were so similar, spent much of their
time in warring against one another. To the southward, beyond the
eagle’s horizon, far and far and far beyond, were the provinces of Rome,
and the power of Rome, and farther, farther, farther south, Rome
itself. And all the constellations, and all the barbarian tribes and
nations hungered after the fatness thereof.
The eagle, over-flying an oaken and a beechen world, might look down
upon a clearing beside a broad and limpid stream, and upon the house of
Terig, chief of a Gothic tribe. The house was large and low, built of
fir-wood, heavy-walled, well-roofed, a great place according to the
barbarian mind. It had dependent huts in number, it looked forth upon
the river where were fish, and upon fields of wheat and rye, and upon
pasturage over-roamed by a vast herd of cattle, and upon the forest
filled with hunters’ fare. And into its great hall came, every day, to
feast with Terig, a hundred Gothic men and women. And when Terig sent
forth and called a folk-meet came, from clearings far and near, hundreds
to the green field before the house where grew an oak so old no bard
could guess when it was born. And when Terig said war came to Terig Oak
all of the nation that might walk or be brought in the great ox-wagons.
It was a shield-clashing and a war-like people, tall and strong of body,
both men and women. For virtues it had courage and chastity, great
personal liberty side by side with a chieftain-loyalty often carried
fantastically far, comrade-loyalty, a considerable feeling for truth,
and some perception of justice. There held a northern and barbarian
reverence for women. It had imagination, and was a worshipper of the
powers of nature, vaguely personified. It had iron, but little silver
and gold. It had not letters. Its bards made some amends for that. Now
and again came contact--antennæ touching--with the Roman provinces to
the south. Then was brought news of strange powers and gifts! There were
Goths who hungered for these, as there were many Goths who hungered for
other wealth of Rome.
Sometimes the forest was dark and heavy with gloom, and sometimes it was
wholly an airy gold. Sometimes it stood breathlessly silent, and
sometimes it whispered and spoke. Alleda, the young maiden, hostage from
a Vandal tribe, brought up since childhood in the house of Terig, liked
it silent and liked it speaking. She and Alaran, the son of Terig, old
to a day with her, liked it in all its ways. They wandered together in
its aisles and caverns, purple and green and brown and gold, and,
kneeling, drank from its springs and streams, he for pleasure drinking
from her cupped hands, and she from his. They lay in the sunshine, they
fled from storms; in the open glades or from the bare hilltop they
looked for the rainbow.
Alleda wore a chemise of white linen and a skirt of woollen dyed gentian
blue. She had shoes of doeskin and a mantle of the wool. Now her hair
hung loose, and now she braided it in two long thick braids that fell to
her knees. Alaran had a tunic of soft leather, brown like the wood in
autumn, and leather shoes with thongs that crossed and recrossed and
were tied at his knee. He had a cloak of red, and a woollen fillet
around his head to hold an eagle feather, and in his belt a sheathed
knife. Alleda had been given by the Vandal chief her father to Terig
when she was little, pledge of quietude on the part of the Vandals. For
ten years she and Alaran had roamed the forest in company. It seemed to
them that they had been always together. Sometimes they quarrelled, but
oftener they were good friends.
Terig, looking at them upon a time, said to himself, “If the Goths and
Vandals marry there may be a son who, one day, shall rule them both!”
The idea pleased him, and he turned it over and over, drinking mead out
of a great silver cup that, passing from hand to hand, had come to him
from Rome, sitting beneath his oak tree of whose age no bard had record.
That was when Alleda and Alaran were very young. Terig, hunting and
fighting and judging, sleeping and eating and drinking, let several
years go by. Terig’s wife was dead, but his sister, Fritha, headed the
women and gave him, when he asked it, good advice. Terig, a good giant
two thirds of the time, and the other third a monstrous, ravening wild
boar, went his ways and let Alleda and Alaran play another while. When
they were children no longer, but boy and girl, Terig sent an embassy to
the Vandal chief. His wisest warrior went and the bard who ate at
Terig’s table, and with them a band of shield-clashing young men. When
they returned, bringing with them certain great ones from among the
assenting Vandals, Terig summoned a folk-meet. Alleda and Alaran were
betrothed, under the Terig Oak, in the presence of Goths and Vandals.
When they were eighteen they should be wed.
Alleda and Alaran, now youth and maiden, roamed the forest or sat beside
the river and bending over saw two fair creatures in the glassy flood.
They had a boat named Black Swan, and they rowed in this where they
would. They fished together, they found the honey hives in rocks and
ancient trees, they told each other all their adventures of body or
spirit. At sunrise they might be heard singing: when evening came, or on
weather days when men and women crowded into the hall and the fire was
heaped with wood, they sat as near each other as they might. Emberic the
bard sang loudly of Gothic glory, Gothic heroes and heroines. Alleda
and Alaran, listening, kindling, sought eyes with eyes, soul with soul.
Terig, chancing to observe them one day, said to himself: “He is too
much with her, too little with the young men. That is not as it should
be. I cannot live forever, and he must learn to be king in his turn.”
Terig turned it over before he slept that night. In the morning he
summoned Alleda and Alaran and gave his Gothic commands. Henceforth they
were less and less alone together.
Alaran hunted with the young men, played at games of war with the young
men, went with chief men on Terig’s errands to neighbouring
constellations. He grew in stature and breadth of shoulder and strength
of arm. His voice deepened, his mind changed. Terig Oak saw in him
leader, saw in him king, when Time should beckon Terig.
Alleda sat beside Fritha and span, or walked beside the river with young
women, or roamed with them the forest, or roamed alone. More and more
she went alone. Thrown back upon herself she found within herself
companions. But she loved Alaran and missed him. And once they met
unawares by a forest stream, and all the woods were full of light, and a
thrush was singing like a freed spirit. Moved they knew not how, they
fled each to the other’s arms. “Alleda!”--“Alaran!” Then came Terig,
hunting with his son, and they sprang apart. And, presently, sitting
alone, she heard, deep in the wood, Alaran’s horn.
In the autumn of that year Terig, hunting afar in savage woods, had a
boar’s tusk driven through his thigh. His men brought him to Terig Oak
on a litter of boughs. There he must lie abed, the wound doing ill. It
continued unthriving, though Fritha had healing wisdom, and though the
priests came from the sacred grove and made incantations above it. Terig
lay upon bear-skins, swearing and fevered and growing weak, and the wise
women tried and the wise men, but none could heal the wound. Terig saw
an ox-death before him, and shut his eyes in a sick distaste.
At this moment came Victorinus to the Goths.
Valentinian II was emperor, Syricius pope. Victorinus had held a
bishopric, but zeal for the conversion of the heathen ate sleep from his
eyes and flesh from his bones and from his heart willingness to rest in
the cushioned places of the Church. He resigned his bishop’s crook, took
a staff of oak, tied to it a cross, drew about him ten of his spiritual
sons, and with them fared from the Gallic city, till then the scene of
his labours. He fared northward, crossed after many days the Rhine,
fared onward, northward, and eastward. He was not for tribes and nations
who might hear daily of Christ and Paul; he was for barbarians who had
never heard or heard but the faintest rumour. He was told of a Gothic
people that had not moved with other Goths into Dacia. Victorinus turned
his face in that direction. At last he and his following came to islands
in the forest ocean, came to Goths, came to Terig Oak.
He stood in his Roman dress, with the oak staff and the bound cross
advanced, and ranged behind him the ten Christian men and three
barbarian converts, who served him for interpreters. Not tall, in his
sixtieth year, he was dark and spare and filled with fire, had eyes that
glowed and a voice of gold and honey. He would speak with the king of
these home-staying Goths.
“Terig is sore wounded and ill in his bed.”
“O heathen folk, so much the more should we speak with your king! Else
he may die unsalved.”
Alaran cried, “O Roman, are you one-who-heals? A boar tusked him.”
“I have healing, young man,” answered Victorinus, “for direr wounds. Let
me see him.”
“Come, then,” said Alaran. “Who heals Terig, what care I if he be
stranger or home man?”
Terig lay on bear-skins, very grim, looking silently at his ox-fate.
Staff in hand, Victorinus stood and regarded him, while in at the ample
doorway crowded the bishop’s own following and the household of Terig.
Victorinus beckoned from the ten Probus, the Milanese physician. “Heal
the flesh if you can, Probus. So we may sooner come to his soul.”
Probus the physician healed Terig the Goth, whereby Victorinus got
permission to dwell in the forest hard-by Terig Oak, to fell trees and
build for himself and his followers a house, and for his god a church.
For the time being that was all he won. Terig said that he was well
contented with his own gods, and yawned whether Victorinus spoke
persuasively, or with a solemn and threatening air. But the newcomers
might use the forest. Did not the deer and the bear do that? Moreover,
Terig would send men to help in the hewing and building. And Terig would
not let interfere the priests of the sacred grove.
Victorinus and the ten Christians and those who would aid them cut down
great trees and trimmed logs and built a chapel in the forest and beside
it a lodge for themselves. By the time it was done came the winter, with
snow and ice upon the river, and with howling storms. Terig sent the men
from the south skins of beasts to keep them warm, and they made a fire
in the middle of their great hut, and the smoke went up through a hole
in the roof. Sometimes barbarians came and sat with them about their
fire, and sometimes they went into Terig’s hall. Victorinus worked with
his hands and his brains. He learned that winter the tongue of the
Goths, for he saw that interpreters knew not how to give gold and honey,
fire and light. He closely watched the barbarian life, seeking doors
into their fortress. Meeting one day Emberic the bard, he asked
instruction. At first Emberic scorned him and would not give it, then
came the thought of imposing Gothic glory upon the Roman mind. Emberic
nodded, sat beneath a fir tree and chanted the tribal praise. Warming to
the task, he threw aside the bear-skin from his shoulders. The snow was
coming down, and Victorinus, shivering strongly, looked with longing
upon the discarded covering, but presently repented that weakness, tore
himself from base desires, braced himself to endure hardness for the
gospel’s sake. He sat in the snow and listened to Emberic. All in all,
that winter, Victorinus did much, learned much. But all to whom he would
speak, through his interpreter, or haltingly now with his own tongue, of
Christ and his Bride the Church, broke away with the saying that Terig’s
gods were their gods.... The priests of the grove came to see the lodge
and the chapel. They were not many. He gathered that there had been a
quarrel between Terig and them, and that they held their grove on
sufferance. “O God, my God!” breathed Victorinus. “This is the
time--this is the time! If the barbarian king were won, all were won!
And though they be blindly won, thou wouldst, little by little,
enlighten their blindness!”
The priests of the grove looked darkly upon him and his ten, and upon
their fair chapel and house, and spoke with contempt and with gestures
of scorn. If they might they would have driven him and his men forth,
burning what they had built; doubtless, if they might, would have seized
and bound and slain them upon the grey stone in the middle of their
twilight wood. But they might not do any of that for fear of Terig.
Speak evil of foreigners and foreign gods they might and did. But
Terig’s word stopped the ears of Terig’s men, drew the venom from the
priests’ whispering.
The winter climbed toward spring. Suddenly flared war between Goths and
a tribe of the Heruli. Terig and all his fighting men and Alaran his son
quitted Terig Oak, marched, shouting and singing, through the forest.
The women and the home men went with them a long way, but at last,
parting, poured back to Terig Oak. Here Fritha ruled till Terig should
return.
Now there were flowers in the forest, and unfolding leaves and the first
singing of birds, the humming of bees, the passing of butterflies, and
throughout the days sunshine and balm. Alleda roamed where she would,
and now she dreamed of Alaran, and now she held converse with those
late-found companions within herself. She did not name these, but they
might be named “Love-of-Beauty,” “Longing-for-Wisdom.”
The timber lodge was built, the timber church was built. The altar was
there, the space for worshippers, the table for communicants, the
benches for listeners to the sermon. But save for Victorinus and the ten
and the three converted whom they had brought with them from the Rhine,
there were no worshippers, no communicants, no listeners. To Victorinus
the chapel ached like his heart for converts, for even one--one! “One,
Lord, one!--for ofttimes one bringeth many!”
Victorinus walked in the forest, praying as he walked. Growing
impassioned, he no longer prayed aloud, and after awhile no longer moved
about, but kneeled where he found himself, at the hemlock edge of a
brown dell in the wood. With clasped hands, with moveless limbs, he
struggled, he wrought for that blessing. “One, Lord, one--!”
“Roman--Roman! Roman--Roman!”
Victorinus raised his eyes. There was a woman seated beneath the
hemlocks upon the other side of the dell. He rose to his feet. She made
no movement to come to him; she called him across to her. The bishop in
Victorinus felt injury, recoiled, whereupon the saint, likewise there,
laid hands upon that arrogance. “A barbarian and a woman, Lord!... Am I
not come to barbarians, and didst not Thou Thyself, signal in Thy
lowliness, ofttimes speak first with women?”
Victorinus descended the brown bank upon which he had kneeled, crossed
the dell, and mounted by huge roots of trees to where sat the woman who
had called. Halfway over the distance he saw who it was--Alleda, the
Vandal maiden, who was to be wed to Alaran, the son of Terig.
Victorinus’s heart leaped. His eye was quick, his wit was swift. “Lord,
Lord, if I win her to Thee, may she not win her husband who shall be
king of this people? Was that not what Patricius said, advising us who
went to the barbarians to gain their queens? Lord, Lord, Thou who
wishest the world to come to Thee dost not disdain to make Thy nest in
women’s hearts!”
He mounted to the huge root, coiled upon itself like a serpent, making a
seat for the Vandal girl.
“Roman--Roman!” she said. “To whom were you kneeling over there?”
Victorinus had now, in some sufficiency, the language of the questioner.
And he had his voice of gold and honey, and his eloquence of the mind,
and the fire that burned in him, and the light behind the fire. Alleda
listened, and her eyes were wistful, for within, and that before
Victorinus’s arrival, she had become the seeker. She listened, and when
she rose to retrace her steps to Terig’s house she said, “I will come
again and listen.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
Day after day she turned her steps where she might meet the stranger
with his message from a world out of this world. They met oftenest in
the glade before the church, under trees where sang all the birds. The
little timber building stood before them while Victorinus the bishop
painted the Church, the spiritual Bride and Mother. He drew with
strength and beauty, he painted with lovely colours; enthusiast, he was
skilful to lift the soul into that fragrant air, to press to its lips
the cup of sober inebriation. The chapel stood before them, the lodge
and the garden that the ten brethren were making. Over all played the
sunshine, sailed the white clouds.
“Where do you go?” asked Fritha of Alleda.
“I go to hear that Roman talk of his god. His god speaks to my heart
more than do our gods.”
“Our gods are good enough for Terig and me.”
“I say naught against them,” said Alleda, “but I climb past.”
Victorinus preached Christ, leading her guardedly from height to height.
With all his soul he would have her soul for his Lord. He saw that it
was a deep soul and in need. He wished its individual salvation, and
always, behind it, he saw looming tribes and nations, captured for
Christ....
He preached Christ, and she listened with parted lips and deep eyes. She
heard of a god who cared, and that she did not perish when she died. It
came hauntingly, as though she remembered that, but had forgotten and
now remembered again, vividly and eternally. He preached of sin, and she
acquiesced. She knew that she sinned. He preached salvation, through the
love of God, and because he thought fit not to dwell here upon the
terrors of his doctrine, she read it to be through her love of God as
well as through God’s love for her. She acquiesced; when she loved and
practised good she had joy; not else. That joy was salvation. She was
somewhat silent, not quickly and easily moved as were many converts of
his acquaintance. Because of that seeming coldness, and because he found
mind in her questions, Victorinus put his own mind fully and strongly to
the work. From things she said of the gods of her people--to the
Christian, dæmons--from processes of her thought that now and then she
let him see--he found an undue expansiveness in her idea of good. He
must prune away that wildness, bring into bounds that barbarian
tolerance of ideas without kinship, show her the narrow way, the one
lighted way. His will, his imagination, his genius worked; on all sides
he laid siege to her soul to take it solely for Christ and the growth of
His Church.
He took her in the spring-time, in her ductile youth, in the void and
loneliness made by Alaran’s going. He took her in a longing of her
nature for what she knew not, save that it was higher than she had
climbed, in an inward trying of the wings and straining of the vision
toward some cloud-banded eyrie. He preached a subtile Stair, an unseen
Wing. He preached Christ, and he saw the fire slowly kindle in her eyes,
and her frame begin to tremble.
One day it came to him to speak of the women in the Church of his God.
He told of holy women, pure in the faith, standing fast in good works,
dividers of bread to the poor, nurses and consolers of the sick,
visiting the captive. He told of maidens who would not wed, but, putting
by the sweetness of the flesh, remained virgin, dearer so to their
heavenly Lord. He told of women who were wed, who were mothers, who
turning to Christ had, some the sooner, some after years of strivings
unutterable, the joy of bringing husband or son to His fold Who was only
safety, only joy. He told of martyr women, told at length their
suffering and triumph, told of Blandina, Felicitas, Perpetua, and many
another. He told of the women of Jerusalem, of the sisters of Lazarus,
of the Magdalen, of the Mother of Christ. He found, drawn into this
barque, that there was much that he must say of women. The Vandal maiden
stood with her eyes upon the little church set in the violet aisle of
the forest. Victorinus made an end of his relation and sat looking at
his clasped hands. He had not before in mind drawn these women facts
together. He was moved, thinking of his own mother, who in her arms had
brought him to the Church, and of his mother’s mother, who had sealed
her faith with her blood in the Diocletian persecution.
Said Alleda, “If it is Truth, I would persuade Alaran whom I wed.”
“O maiden!” answered Victorinus, “not alone your lord who will be king
of this folk, but through him this folk, this nation! Great would be
your service, and dearly would Christ smile upon you!”
That was one day. Three passed before she came again. “Tell me now of
the Soul Immortal, of Heaven, and of the Healing of the Nations!”
The flowers increased in number, the trees put forth their leaves, the
ice melted from every sunken, shadowed pool, the host of birds sang from
morn till eve. Victorinus the bishop, with the heart on fire, and the
tongue of gold and honey, gained the convert for whom he prayed. He saw
her tremble and burst into a passion of tears; he saw her lift herself
from the earth where she had thrown herself, kneel and stand and lift
her hands, her face, to the sky; he saw in her face the breaking light
of an inner heaven.
Alleda bent before the altar in the chapel in the wood, Alleda confessed
Christ. The ten brethren witnessing, Victorinus baptized her. It was
done in secret, so many upon the face of the earth that yet was in the
grasp of the Prince of the Powers of the Air being baptized in secret.
One day it should be known....
It was Victorinus who advised that secrecy. Of all temporal things in
this forest, he wished the marriage of Alaran and Alleda, and the
continued love of Alaran for Alleda. Unknown to himself, he wished the
death of Terig. If Alaran were king in Terig’s place, then might Alleda,
when her woman’s wiles had wrought a yielding and propitious hour, then
might Alleda, kneeling, say, “I am Christian: O lord and husband, become
Christian with me!” Then might she bring Victorinus to him, and Alaran
hearken as Terig had not, and all the Goths be baptized with their king.
Victorinus dreamed so....
“Why do you look so happy?” Fritha asked Alleda. “Have you dreamed that
Terig scatters the Heruli, and that Alaran can hardly be told from
Terig?”
Alleda laughed. “I have dreamed that Terig and Alaran both shall come
into a kingdom!”
She came still to the glade by the church to be further taught of
Victorinus. He had great power over her; she gave him devotion who had
brought her soul bread. If her reason murmured at aught he said, she
reproached herself and rocked her reason to sleep. To so much her reason
said, “It is so,” and she would give faith to the rest. He exalted
faith, and she learned so to exalt it. He held it above all virtues, and
she gave her hands, too, to holding it so.
Victorinus had now for her an affection, a solicitude. He found that she
was too ready to laugh, too admiring of mere light and sun and motion,
too filled with earthly life. “Lord, Lord, I confess to Thee that my
lower man doth find pleasure in her so, but not my higher man, Lord! Let
me teach her horror of this world, thought only of Thy Heaven! Let me
show her the blackness of any here, the blackness of woman here, whom
the Tempter first approached, knowing her weakness! Let me show her the
filth and smallness of her soul, which yet Thou lovest and hast saved!
Lord, Lord, let me make her only, solely, beggar for her soul and the
soul of him who will be her husband, and the souls of this people!”
Now he taught of the Fall and Condemnation and of the Fire of Hell and
Eternal Loss. Nor did he give what he taught metaphysical being, for
here he erred himself, nor saw with any clearness what his words
figured. But he used his eloquence, his age and subtlety, to press back
her mind as his own was pressed back, to erect before hers as before his
own an image of Consternation. The Vandal woman paled and stood
transfixed. Hell ... Eternal Loss!
Back through the forest, shouting to victory, bringing spoil from the
Heruli, came Terig and Alaran and the fighting men. All was rude joy at
Terig Oak, joy and drinking, feasting and rest. Fighting men crowded
into the hall or lay strewn like acorns around the oak; home people made
a surrounding ring or pressed in and out. Emberic chanted deep and
strong that victory, its incidents and its heroes. Now one warrior and
now another shouted corroboration, or made a point and amended the song.
Men, women and children held festival. The priests, coming from the
grove, claimed sacrifice. Terig gave it from among the captured herds
and prisoners. Terig Oak went in rude procession to the grove and
circled the stone while the priests slew the victims, then returned to
the tree and the mead-drinking. But Alleda did not go.
Alleda said to Alaran, “I will not!”
“If evil come to Terig Oak they will say, ‘Because one stayed away.’”
“Say as they will, I will not!”
“What reason?”
“O Alaran, if you will listen I will tell you--”
But Alaran was angered and would not listen. But he stood between her
and Terig. “Let her be!” he said to Terig and Fritha. Alaran had fought
the Heruli like the thunder god descending on that land. Moreover, he
had planned warfare as Terig could not plan. Now he held before the folk
their joining with the broad stream of the Goths and descending like the
torrents after winter upon those famed, rich lands far to the south.
Terig and Terig’s men gave Alaran what he would.
Alleda left the drinking, feasting, chanting, boasting throng in Terig’s
hall and about the oak. She left the warrior-serving, laughing,
triumphing women. She stole to the forest and to the glade by the
church. “O my father!” she cried to Victorinus. “Christ is my
Bridegroom! He is my All! You tell me that to keep sacred to Christ is
man or woman’s Heaven and the service that they owe! You tell me that
the blessed Paul was right when he said that to be virgin is better than
to be wed. O my father! There is love for Alaran in my heart, but now is
there higher love for Christ! I would cleave to Him and wed no man--”
“No,” said Victorinus. “No!”
Now he must show her that women might not always do as they would, but
must serve high purposes which others devised. Somewhere in his nature
he stood to worship the virgin in her, and strenuously in Gaul and in
Italy had he preached virginity in man and in woman. But she must wed
the king-to-be of this barbarous people, bring him and them to Christ,
give them a prince who from the cradle should be Christian! “O God, who
through winding ways bringest all to Thee, give me power to bind her to
the horns of Thy altar--”
He made her sit before him, and through a summer afternoon he taught her
her duty here. As the sun went down red, he ceased. She stood up, pale,
but with eyes that glowed like the eyes of Victorinus. She raised her
clasped hands, “O high God, high and most sweet! Hear me swear to Thee,
that I will bring Thee Alaran and this Nation!”
Spring touched summer. Terig sat very long one eve beneath Terig Oak,
his back to the huge bole, his tankard of mead beside him. Fritha,
passing, turned aside to find out his dreaming. She touched his
shoulder, then his brow, she looked closely, she laid hands over his
heart. Then she cried loudly. “Terig! Terig!--Alaran!”
Terig was dead. All the Goths moaned greatly for him. They came from
clearings far away, they filled the dark forest with chants of sorrow.
The bards strung the strings of their rude harps, they sang Terig’s
might and his glory and the might of dark Death. The priests of the
grove played their part. A great pyre was built for Terig, at dusk it
was kindled. All night the flames reddened the surrounding wood. Men and
women circled the heap with cries and invocations.
Daybreak came, and the flames were gone, and the embers dying to ash.
The fighting men raised upon their shields Alaran, son of Terig. They
bore him so around Terig Oak. They dashed upon the tree mead and water
and called it Alaran Oak. They seated Alaran in Terig’s chair, and for
him clashed their shields and shook their spears. Men and women blended
their voices in the shouting. Alaran was king of these Goths in Terig’s
stead.
Alaran was tall and broad of shoulder, yellow-haired, with yellow hair
upon his upper lip, with sky-blue eyes. When the shouting came to an
end, he stood, and, spear in hand, promised to be as Terig. One week the
folk feasted at Terig Oak.
Alaran and Alleda met by the riverside, over them willows and poplars,
before them the wide stream. “Now I will that we wed,” said Alaran,
“when the wheat is ripe, at the midsummer feast!”
“I will so, too!”
“You are fairer than ever you were,” said Alaran. “You stand in my
heart, and it is bright flame and bright flowers around you!”
“As wheat and vines and rivers is my love for you and it has always been
so!... But we must travel on, though we carry love in our arms--like a
child, like a child!”
The grain ripened, the year came to midsummer. Men and women gathered to
the marriage of the chief of these Goths and Alleda the Vandal. There
came also, many leagues through the forest, chief men and bards of the
Vandals.
Alleda came to the glade and spoke with Victorinus. “They talk around
the oak of joining with other Goths and pouring south against your
country!”
“The City of God is my country,” said Victorinus. “Our country-love is
to bring souls to Christ.”
“The priests of the grove come to Alaran and persuade him to thrust out
you and the ten brethren, and to tear down the church!”
“Wed him, besiege him with your spirit, win, and this little church
shall give place to a great church, all this people hewing and building!
But for me, have I not longed, O my Lord and God, to be counted among
Thy martyrs?”
She came again after three days. Her eyes shone. “Alaran has pledged me
that no harm shall come to you and the brethren, nor to my lovely
church!”
“When thou art queen, child, thou shalt win him! He is further on the
way than was Terig.”
She sat at his feet. “O my father, tell me of wedded life in the land
that Christ trod, and the lands where His Church grows! Although
virginity be the highest, still even the other must be more beautiful
there than here.”
Victorinus kept silence for a little, pondering what he should say to
this barbarian girl whom he had brought to Christ, for whom he felt
affection, from whom he hoped nothing less than action that should turn
forest thousands into Christians.
He thought it was more beautiful there than here. Here was a rude
equality, a practical freedom of woman, stepping by the side of man,
that grated harshly upon all his sensibilities. He never denied that the
soul of woman was as valuable as the soul of man. That came from Christ;
it must be; it was taken so. But Christ had been about the business of
the City of God, and had given to Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s. Christ,
saying naught of the matter, had therefore let rest with man, so long as
man was upon this earth, man’s authority over woman. That was man’s due
since he was God’s creature and woman but drawn from him in his sleep,
his dream, as it were; man’s due since Eve had sinned and tempted Adam,
and God had said, _Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee!_ Christ had let that rest. _As was fitting!_ said underneath
the breath a man within Victorinus. Where Christ had said naught, Paul
had affirmed. _Yea! let it rest. It is as it should be!_ in effect had
said Paul.--Victorinus’s mind dwelled upon the Jewish scriptures, and
saw that all through it has been as it should be.
His mind returned to that Pagan life into which he had been born, which
had flowed about him, which yet flowed. That Pagan life was in the power
of dæmons--Jove, Apollo, Mercury, all dæmons! But even in that life God
guided some things underneath, as it were through hidden ways.
Splintered notions must have come, down brought from Eden and Noah’s
time and Father Abraham, whirled across in some wind to Greece and
Italy. Even there existed some fitnesses in common life that the dæmons
had not blasted. The subordination of woman in all places where the
governing word must fall--that had come by the breath of God! Even in
paganry the female dæmons weighed less, ruled in lower places than the
male. Even the dæmons could not overturn the Eden word.
Victorinus’s imagination touched and tasted all the sweet humilities
that in ages Eve had put on. He loved them in her; familiar they were
and dear! This barbarous people in their northern clime, kept by dæmons
huge, uncouth and dark, were even further than the old Pagan world from
the Eden wind. Naught in them so honestly shocked, so scandalized him,
as did that freedom in forest and field and house of the barbarian
women. Hardly might it be said that they did not war; ofttimes he heard
of them going in number with the men. That was barbarous, abhorrent!
They were not now found among the priests, though it was said that it
had been so. But there were prophetesses among them, greatly listened
to. That might pass; it had been so in Bible land and other lands; so
that they were curbed, and man ruled in the Church! But in these forests
they gave their word in council; they with the men chose policies, laws
and rulers. Victorinus’s mind recoiled violently. And outdoors and
within they spoke freely as did the men; they held their own; they would
or they would not! A king might rule men and women, though no further
than they would; the priest of the grove might chain men and women with
the dæmon’s chain; the old might claim reverence from the young. But man
as man was not ruler, nor was woman as woman ruled.
Victorinus liked best the way to which he was used, liked it perhaps
not wholly alone because he was used to it. Because he liked it best he
truly thought it more beautiful. These forest ways were but more dæmon
ways for entrapping souls! Pride was a horrible evil, and pride in woman
most horrible.... He thought of his mother and sisters and all his women
kindred, and their gentle virtues. In memory their ways caressed him,
soothing, pleasing him. Man needed contrast, foil....
By now he had for Alleda a fatherly solicitude, affection. She was his
convert, the soul saved--and the dedicated means to great ends. He
thought now, sitting here pondering the matter, that he would make that
which he had wrought as perfect as he could. He would plant Christ in
the centre, and around flowers that should be of that Gardener’s
garden--flowers of faith, humility and obedience. He would plant them in
all the ways, earthly and heavenly, so that nowhere should the dæmons be
able to approach, because the flowers’ beauty and fragrance should drive
them back. In all the alleys of pride he would plant them.
His mind had over-travelled all this in much less time than it has taken
to tell.
Alleda sat beneath a green and spreading beech, and before her across
the glade rose the little church, and the house of the Christians and
the garden that they worked in. She was nineteen. Her knees were bent,
her head was bowed to the great and flowering Presence in her heart. She
was not now inclined to look aside at things brought forward to see if
they truly glowed and warmed in that Presence, or if the Presence
extended not to them its mantle of light. She was in an attitude to take
them on authority, and she was not perfected in disentangling
authorities.
“Hearken to me, maiden,” said Victorinus, “and though I preach the right
abasement of woman, doubt not that I love you and that Christ loves
you!... I would tell you, if I may find the tongue wherewith to praise
her, of a Christian woman with whom I had acquaintance one time in
Milan, the mother of a man, who, when he has unravelled wholly the
tissue of his own errors, may gain a great name in the Church of the
Living God. No saintlier might you have found than this Monica, nor no
purer example to all women! I have heard another woman and a wife say
that Monica, advising many wives together one day, did say this to them.
‘From that time when you have heard read to you the marriage writings,
do you hold them, according to God’s will, as indentures whereby you are
made servants, and so, keeping in memory your condition, do you in no
place nor time set yourself in opposition to your husband. Only,’ she
said on, ‘in so doing, you must in no-wise betray nor slackly serve
Christ, who is your Master over your master.’--Truly, child, the Church
could have said no different nor better!”
“I do not understand,” said the barbarian woman. “Yet there is something
that comes up in my mind--”
She sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, her eyes
upon the earth.
Victorinus watched her somewhat uneasily. Presently he began to speak of
the just virtues of women, and he spoke in gold and honey. “More and
more,” he said, “you the barbarians and we the civilized will touch and
clasp and mingle. Never too soon can right notions steal among you--”
He was not sure that Alleda was listening. She seemed sunk in herself.
“Child!” he said sharply.
She dropped her hands at his tone, and he saw that she was smiling. “Is
Alaran better than me? Christ is better. But is Alaran? I think that we
are the same. Why, then--”
Iron came into Victorinus’s voice. “Will you deny Scripture and set your
reason against Almighty God’s--”
The forest murmured, the white clouds sailed overhead, thistledown in
the air, and the air thistledown in the ether. At the bottom of the
glade, taking and holding the human eye, stood the little church, and
from the garden beside came the sound of the brethren at work.
* * * * *
Midsummer was here, and Alleda and Alaran were wed. Autumn came, winter
followed, spring swept in song and colour over the land.
“You believe--you believe!” said Alleda.
“Almost I believe,” answered Alaran. “But I will not hasten. There is
much to think of.”
The days grew long and warm. When the wheat had begun to ripen
birth-pangs took Alleda. As a rule barbarian women gave birth easily,
but here was some difference. Alleda lay in anguish, and the sun sank
and rose again and sank and the babe was not born. Fritha and the wise
women wrought, but nothing was of avail. Through and around Alaran Oak a
silence held save when Alleda cried out.
“Naught answers. She will die!” said Fritha.
Alaran ran through the moonlighted forest to the lodge of the Christian
men. “Victorinus! Victorinus!”
The moonbeams, streaming through the open door and window, flooded the
church. Victorinus was kneeling there. “Is she lightened? Is the babe
born?”
“You had one with you who healed Terig’s wound--”
“Alas! It was Probus who died in the winter--”
“She will die. They all say it.--Roman! She says that you have a great
god. Beg your god to make her live! If she lives I will turn
Christian--I and Alaran Oak and all the Goths by the river.” He broke
away. Victorinus heard him brush the trees as he went.
All night Victorinus lay before the altar and prayed. “O God, God, this
people! Now is the day for them to come. O Lord Jesus, will it not
please Thee to draw them to Thee through every forest aisle, to see them
around Thy building here like the blades of grass for number? O sweet
Jesus! and this little stream that runs hard by for the water of
baptism.... And the woman herself, Lord--”
The dawn turned the sky red behind Alaran Oak. In tree and bush the bird
began to sing to the bird on the nest. The mist rose like a ghost from
the river. Alleda gave a great cry, then lay still.... Voices of women
arose, rejoicing.
Fritha went to Alaran crouched by the hearth. “The babe is born!”
“Will she live?”
“Yes, yes!”
Victorinus took his staff and with two brethren behind him went to
Alaran Oak.
At the edge of the forest Alaran met him. “She lives! She lives! She and
the babe live!”
Victorinus lifted his staff. The morning light struck upon the cross
atop. “Christ gave the boon! Pay, O barbarian, the debt thou owest!”
Alleda came out of the hut of Death and lay breathing the air of every
day, the babe beside her, in the hollow of her arm. Alaran sat by the
couch spread with coarse linen of the women’s spinning. Her eyes sought
his. He put his yellow head down beside her. “Yes, yes. We are going to
be Christians together!”