Gilbert waited long, for he went down early to the river, and he sat on
a big stone sunning himself, for the air was keen, and there was a
north wind. At last he saw two veiled women coming along the bank. The
shorter one was a little lame and leaned upon the other's arm, and the
wind blew their cloaks before them as they came. When he saw that
Beatrix limped, knowing that she had not quite recovered from her fall,
and remembering that she might have been killed, his heart sank with a
sickening faintness.
He took her by the hand very gently, for she looked so slight and ill
that he almost feared to touch her, and yet he did not wish to let her
fingers go, nor she to take them away. The tirewoman went down to the
river-bank, at some distance, and they sat upon the big stone, hand in
hand like two children, and looked at each other. Suddenly the girl's
face lightened, as if she had just found out that she was glad; her
eyes laughed, and her voice was as happy as a bird's at sunrise.
Gilbert had not seen her for a long time. To such a man, all women, and
even one chosen woman, might easily become an ideal, too far from the
material to have a real hold upon his manhood, and so high above earth
as to have no spiritual realization. Even in that age many a knight
made a divinity of his lady and a religion of his devotion to her, so
that the very meaning of love was forgotten in the ascetic impulse to
seek the soul's salvation in all things, even in the contempt of all
earthly longings; and those men demanded as much in return, expecting
it even after their own death. There were also women, like Anne of
Auch, who gave such devotion freely. Nevertheless, it was not
altogether in this way between Beatrix and Gilbert, and if it might
have been, so far as he was concerned, she would not have had it so,
and her words proved it.
"I am so proud of you!" she cried. "And I am so very glad to see you."
"Proud of me?" he asked, smiling sadly. "I am not proud of myself. For
all I have done, you might be dead at Nicaea."
"But I am alive," she answered happily, "and by your doing, though I
cannot yet walk quite well."
"I ought to have let the Queen pass on. I ought to have thought only of
you."
He found a satisfaction in saying aloud at last what had been so long
in his heart against himself, and in saying it to Beatrix herself. But
she would not hear it.
"That would have been very unknightly and disloyal," she said. "I would
not have had you do it, for you would have been blamed by men. And then
I should never have heard what I heard yesterday and last night, the
very best words I ever heard in all my life--the cry of a great army
blessing one man for a good work well done."
"I have done nothing," answered Gilbert, stolidly determined to
depreciate himself in her eyes.
But she smiled and laid her gloved hand quickly upon his lips.
"I would not have another laugh at you, as I do!" she cried.
He looked at her, and the mask of grave melancholy which was fast
becoming his natural expression began to soften, as if it could not
last forever.
"I have often thought of you and wondered whether you would think well
of my deeds," he said.
"You see!" she laughed. "And now because I am proud of you, you pretend
that you have done nothing! That is poor praise of my good sight and
judgment."
He laughed, too. Since the dawn of time, women have retorted thus upon
brave men too modest of their doings; and since the first woman found
the trick, it has never failed to please man. But love needs not
novelty, for he himself is always young; the stars of night are not
less fair in our eyes because men knew the 'sweet influence of the
Pleiades' in Job's day, nor is the scent of new-mown hay less delicate
because all men love it. The old is the best, even in love, which is
young.
"Say what you will," answered Gilbert, presently, "we are together
to-day."
"And nothing else matters," said Beatrix. "Not even that it is two
months since I have seen you, and that I have been ill, or, at least,
half crippled, by that fall. It is all forgotten."
He looked at her, not quite understanding, for as she spoke her
eyebrows were raised a little, with her own expression, half sad, half
laughing at herself.
"I wish I could see you more often," answered Gilbert.
Her little birdlike laugh disconcerted him.
"Indeed, I am in earnest," he said.
"And yet when you are in earnest, you do much harder things," answered
Beatrix, and at once the sadness had the better of the laughter in her
face. "Oh, Gilbert, I wish we were back in England in the old days."
"So do I!"
"Oh, no! You do not. You say so to please me, but you cannot make it
sound true. You are a great man now. You are Sir Gilbert Warde, the
Guide of Aquitaine. It is you, and you only, who are leading the army,
and you will have all the honour of it. Would you go back to the old
times when we were boy and girl? Would you, if you could?"
"I would if I could."
He spoke so gravely that she understood where his thoughts were, and
that they were not all for her. For a few moments she looked down in
silence, pulling at the fingers of her glove, and once she sighed;
then, without looking up, she spoke, in her sweet, low voice.
"Gilbert, what are we to each other? Brother and sister?"
He started, again not understanding, and fancying that she was setting
up the Church's canon between them, which he now knew to be no
unremovable impediment.
"You are no more my sister than your tirewoman there can be," he
answered, more warmly than he had spoken yet.
"I did not mean that," she said sadly.
"I do not understand, then."
"If you do not, how can I tell you what I mean?" She glanced at him and
then looked away quickly, for she was blushing, and was ashamed of her
boldness.
"Do you mean that I love you as I might a sister?" asked Gilbert, with
the grave tactlessness of a thoroughly honest man.
The blush deepened in her cheek, and she nodded slowly, still looking
away.
"Beatrix!"
"Well?" She would not turn to him.
"What have I done that you should say such a thing?"
"That is it!" she answered regretfully. "You have done great things,
but they were not for me."
"Have I not told you how I have thought of you day after day, hoping
that you might think well of my deeds?"
"Yes. But you might have done one thing more. That would have made all
the difference."
"What?" He bent anxiously towards her for the answer.
"You might have tried to see me."
"But I was never in the camp. I was always a day's march in the lead of
the army."
"But not always fighting. There were days, or nights, when you could
have ridden back. I would have met you anywhere--I would have ridden
hours to see you. But you never tried. And at last it is I who send for
you and beg you to come and talk with me here. And you do not even seem
glad to be with me."
"I did not think that I had a right to leave my post and come back,
even for you."
"You could not have helped it--if you had cared." She spoke very low.
Gilbert looked at her long, and the lines deepened in his face, for he
was hurt.
"Do you really believe that I do not love you?" he asked, but his voice
was cold because he tried to control it, and succeeded too well.
"You have never told me so," Beatrix answered. "You have done little to
make me think so, since we were children together. You have never tried
to see me when it would have cost you anything. You are not glad to see
me now."
Her voice could be cold, too; but there was a tremor in some of the
syllables. He was utterly surprised and taken unawares, and he slowly
repeated the substance of what she said.
"I never told you so? Never made you think so? Oh, Beatrix!"
He remembered the sleepless nights he had passed, accusing himself of
letting even one thought of the Queen come between him and the girl who
was denying his love--the restless, melancholy hours of
self-accusation, the cruel self-torment--how could she know?
She was in earnest, now, though she had begun half playfully; for if
the man's heart had not changed, he had gone away from her in his
active life, and in the habit of hiding all real feeling which comes
from living long alone or with strangers. It was true that outwardly he
had hardly seemed glad to see her, and all the ring of happiness had
died away out of her voice before they had exchanged many words. He
felt her mood, and it grew clear to him that he had made some great
mistake which it would be very hard to set right. And she was thinking
how boldly she had striven with the Queen for his love, and that now it
seemed to be no love at all.
But he, whose impulse was ever to act when there was danger, however
much he might weary his soul with inward examination at other times,
grew desperate, and gave up thinking of a way out of the difficulty.
What he loved was slipping from him, and though he loved it in his own
way, it was indeed all he loved, and he would not let it go.
Thoughtless at last, and sudden, he took her into his arms, and his
face was close to hers, and his eyes were in hers, and their lips
breathed the same breath. She was not frightened, but her lids drooped,
and she turned quite white. Then he kissed her, not once, but many
times, and as if he would never let her go, on her pale mouth, on her
dark eyelids, on her waving hair.
"If I kill you, you shall know that I love you," he said, and he kissed
her again, so that it hurt her, but it was good to be hurt.
After that she lay in his arms, very still, and she looked up slowly,
and their eyes met; and it was as if the veil had fallen from between
them. When he kissed her again, his kisses were gentle and altogether
tender.
"I had almost lost you," he said, breathing the words to her ear.
The Norman tirewoman sat motionless by the river's edge, waiting till
she should be called. After a time they began to talk again, and their
voices were in tune, like their hearts. Then Gilbert spoke of what had
happened in the night, but Beatrix already knew that her father had
come.
"He has come to take me away," she said, "and we have talked together.
Gilbert--a dreadful thing has happened; did he tell you?"
"He told me nothing--excepting that I was a coward!" He laughed
scornfully.
"I think he is half mad with sorrow." She paused and laid her hand on
Gilbert's. "His wife is dead,--your mother is dead,--with the child she
bore him."
Gilbert's eyes alone changed, but under her palm Beatrix felt the
sinews of his hand leap and the veins swell.
"Tell me quickly," he said.
"She was burned," continued Beatrix, in a tone of awe. "She made my
father grind his people till they turned, and she made him hang the
leader who spoke for them. Then all the yeomen and the bondmen rose,
and they burned the castle, and your mother died with the child. But my
father escaped alive. Now I am again his only child, and he wants me
again."
Gilbert's head fell forward, as if he had received a blow, but he said
nothing for a time, for he saw his mother's face; and he saw her not as
when they had parted, but as he remembered her before that, when he had
loved her above all things, not knowing what she was. In spite of all
that had gone between, she came back to him as she had been, and the
pain and the pity were real and great. But then he felt Beatrix's hand
pressing his in sympathy, and it brought him again to the evil truth.
He raised his head.
"She is better dead," he said bitterly. "Let us not speak of her any
more. She was my mother."
He stared long at the river, and the sadness of his homeless and lonely
state in the world began to come upon him, as it came often. Then a
soft voice broke the spell, and the words answered his thoughts.
"We are not alone, you and I," it said, and the two small hands crept
up shyly and clasped his neck, and the loving, pathetic face looked up
to his. "Do not let him take me away!" she begged.
His hand pressed her head to his breast, and once more he kissed her
hair.
"He shall not take you," he said. "No one shall take you from me; no
one shall come between you and me."
Beatrix's eyes seemed to drink out of his the meaning of the words he
spoke.
"Promise me that," she said, knowing that he would promise her the
world.
"I promise it with all my heart."
"On your knightly faith?" She smiled as she insisted.
"On my honour and faith."
"And on the faith of love, too?" She almost laughed, out of sheer
happiness.
"On the very truth of true love," he answered.
"Then I am quite safe," she said, and she hid her face against his
surcoat. "I am glad I came to you, I am glad that I was so bold as to
send for you this day, for it is the best day of my whole life. And,
Gilbert, you will not wait till I send for you another time? You will
try and see me--of your own accord?"
She was altogether in anxiety again, and there was a look of fear and
sadness in her eyes.
"I will try--indeed I will," he said earnestly.
"Whenever you do, you shall succeed," she answered, nestling to him. "I
wish I might shut my eyes and rest here--now that I know."
"Rest, sweet, rest!"
A moment, and then, from far away, a clarion call rang on the still
air. With the instinct of the soldier, Gilbert started, and listened,
holding his breath, but still pressing the girl close to him.
"What is it?" she asked, half frightened.
It came again, joyous and clear.
"It is nothing," he said. "It is the Christmas banquet, and perhaps the
King drinks the Queen's health--and she his."
"And perhaps, though no one knows it, she--" But Beatrix stopped and
laughed. "I will not say it! Why should I care?"
She was thinking that if the Queen drank a health it might be meant, in
her heart, for the Guide of Aquitaine, and she nestled closer to him in
the sunshine.