in our speech the thoughts of all men, and to understand with our
ears the thoughts of all men. When you speak I hear your meaning in
the words of the woodland, and when I speak to you my meaning takes
possession of you and you shape it for yourself into the usage of your
familiar speech, and so it will be for me always, wherever I go."
Simon nodded. If this were so he could understand that something in her
utterance which seemed alien and quaint to him. Here truly was a gift
scarcely less enviable than the grace of perdurable life. Argathona
interrupted his meditations.
"You have asked me many questions," she said, looking straightly at him
from under level brows; "now answer some for me. Is it the manner of
mortal man to make love in your fashion?"
Simon looked awkward and fumbled with his beard.
"There are many ways of making love," he confessed. "Some are more
formal," he admitted, after a moment's pause.
The nymph looked thoughtful.
"Such would please me better," she said. She eyed Simon circumspectly,
then questioned, suddenly, "Why do you carry that lantern?"
Simon unhooked it from his girdle and held it at arm's-length, a
formidable piece of furniture for a traveller.
"There was some fellow of old time did the like for my reason--looking
for an honest man or an honest woman."
The dryad smiled at memories.
"I have heard of that; it was a mad Athenian called Diogenes."
"I care not what his name was," said Simon, "but I like his humor and
I follow his quest. Not that the lantern is of much use to me in the
daytime, but it shows my good faith."
"Have you found no honest folk?" Argathona asked, sympathetically.
Simon shook his red head.
"Never since I came to these regions of Greece," Simon protested.
"There were honest folk in Rouen, or, at least, I used to think so.
Alain, the armorer, he was an honest man. He made this blade," and
Simon patted the stout sword at his side. "I never met with a better.
But since I came to Corinth to serve the duke I have found no honest
soul or body."
Argathona gave a little shiver.
"I am glad that I dwell here in the greenwood, and not with your clan."
Simon rambled on with his narrative.
"When I came to these parts I still had the bulk of a pretty little
patrimony. Where is it now? Every light o' love in Corinth has filched
her bit of it; every cozener with the dice has picked his share. While
I was rich my friends fawned on me; when I fell poor they turned their
backs, lads and lassies. I have written some rhymes on my misfortune."
He paused, hoping that the maid might ask to hear them, but as she did
no such thing he resumed, plaintively:
"So now I trample this planet seeking an honest human."
"Do you hope to find such in Athens?" Argathona asked.
She was quite interested in this queer, russet-colored man, with his
wild words and his wild wits--as interested as she would be if she came
upon some new kind of fawn or unfamiliar moth in the forest. Simon
grunted uncertainly.
"I have my doubts," he said, "though every great lord and every little
lord in Attica will be there. But I do not go to Athens solely to that
end. I hope to find service with the Duke of Athens, who loves, so they
tell me, such stout fellows as I be."
He stretched his great arms apart as he spoke, in pride at their mighty
muscles. Then, remembering how little their strength had availed him
against the witchery of the nymph, he grinned a thought sheepishly. But
Argathona was honestly admiring his force, and only pitying him for not
being comely. They sat for a moment looking at each other, thinking
their own thoughts. About them all was very still in the moonlight,
silence only troubled by the wheeling of bats and the droning of
insects. Suddenly from the distance came loud shouts, furious cries,
and then the angry clash of steel on steel and the clattering of a
horse's hoofs in furious flight.
IV
THE MYSTIC ROSE
The young prince lay in the shadow while his horse cropped at the fresh
grass, and he read the _Romance of the Rose_, and as he read it seemed
as if he, too, lay there dreaming with the dreamer, and that all the
amazing pageant of the tale moved before him as the figures on the
woven arras of a great room move, stirred by the wind. For he, like the
teller of the tale, seemed to wake from sleep on a May morning and to
stray into the meadows to hearken to the matins of the birds. Like the
dreamer, he wandered over flower-starred fields beside a river broader
and shallower than the Seine till he came to the garden and the castle
whose walls were adorned in gold and colors with the hideous images
of Hate, Felony, Villany, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Eld,
Hypocrisy, and Poverty; and it seemed to him that after he had sated
his awed fancy with the study of those strange devices, he, too, sought
if by any means he might get into the garden. Then in this waking sleep
he found at last a small wicket, and he smote thereon, and the gate was
opened to him by a damsel who told him that her name was Idleness, and
that she was the friend of the master of the castle and garden, whose
name was Mirth, and she gleefully bade him enter, and he obeyed and
found himself straightway in so fair a garden that he deemed himself to
have arrived at the earthly paradise. His dream spirit, following fast
on the dainty heels of Idleness, came to where apple-faced Mirth and
his jolly company, fair men and fair women, entertained themselves with
song and dance.
But while he was with that genial congress and sharing in their sports,
the God of Love came over the grass with Sweet-Looking by his side, and
Sweet-Looking carried two bows, one crooked and knotty, the other even
and comely, and two quivers, each holding five arrows, and the arrows
in the quiver in the right hand were Beauty, Simplesse, Franchise,
Company, and Fair-Semblance, and those in the left hand were the arrows
of Pride, Villany, Shame, Wanhope, and New-Thought. Then the dreamer
fled away from these presences, and as he went the God of Love dogged
his footsteps with the fair bow and the fair arrow in his hand, and the
dreamer came to that clear fountain where Narcissus drowned himself
for self-love. In the waters of this fountain the dreamer beheld the
reflection of a rose-bush all on fire with roses, and the desire of
that rose-bush filled his heart so hotly that he would not have parted
with one bud thereof, might he hope to gain so much, for the city of
Paris or the city of Pavia. And while he hungered for the rose, the
God of Love came up with him and pierced him with the five arrows of
Beauty and Simplesse and Franchise and Company and Fair-Semblance, and
with each wound he became more and more Love's servant and vassal, and
then Love locked his heart with a golden key and left him with but one
desire in that shut heart, the desire to obtain the noble rose.
And so in his dream the youth pursued his adventure till he came to
where the rose-bush flourished and found it guarded by all manner of
evil passions, who grinned defiance at him and knotted their gnarled
hands to make a barrier to hold him from the lovely, lonely rose. And
even as he despaired of success Queen Venus came to his aid--Venus
with roses in her hair and roses at her feet, a beautiful, alluring
presence, and cheered him with sweet smiles and urged him with sweet
words to complete the achievement of the rose. Line by line and page
by page the story of the wonderful book seemed to tell itself over in
living pictures to his dreaming eyes, and the gracious women with the
gracious names courtesied to him and kissed their pink finger-tips, and
the evil faces mowed at him, and behind and beyond the fair faces and
the foul he could see the glorious flower that he longed for. And he
thought that Venus led him by the hand till he was close to the flower,
and gave him leave to kiss it, and he stooped and kissed the rose, and
his blood ran fire and his spirit was sanctified.
Then, with a shiver, Rainouart woke, and realized that he was lying
alone by the highway to Athens, and that the day had darkened and
the shadows were falling, and that his horse was fretting impatiently
at his tether, and that the book had fallen from his relaxed fingers,
and that he was very much alone on the earth. And he wished with all
his unblemished soul that he could slip from the world he lived in,
from the world where he loved no woman, into that kingdom of dreams,
and achieve through all impediments and obstacles the love of his
unknown lady. Wishing thus with a deep sigh, and realizing the vanity
of the wish with a deeper, he thrust the book back into his bosom,
and unfastened his horse and mounted him and turned his head towards
Athens, letting him go at his own gait. Muffled in his melancholy
musings, he suffered the bridle to drop on his horse's neck and rode
with folded arms, meditating upon the power of poesy, and wondering
if it were truly well for him that it had pleased Heaven to make his
spirit so unhappily different from the spirits of the light-hearted
knights of his father's court, who loved and were content, or who loved
and were discontent, but who were always blithe of spirit and seemed to
ask nothing better of fortune.
As he thus jogged and mused, trusting to his horse to find its way
to the city, suddenly from the shadow of the trees that bordered the
white highway came leaping from either side menacing figures, and the
dusk was troubled with the gleam of naked steel. And then, before the
prince could realize what had happened, his horse gave a great scream
of pain, for one of the skulkers had wounded the animal in the side,
aiming to hamstring it, and missing his mark in the dusk and flurry.
The horse reared, and the prince, taken unawares, lost his stirrups.
But Rainouart was too skilful a rider to be thrown, for instinctively
he gripped the sides of his horse with his thighs and caught at the
crupper, and if he had chosen could have escaped from his assailants
easily enough astride of the galloping steed. But it was not in him
to avoid danger thus or to fly from any odds; so, leaning forward, he
caught on the bridle and brought the frightened animal to a moment's
stand-still, and then deftly swinging himself from the saddle alighted
on his feet on the highway. In another moment his sword was out to meet
the swords of his antagonists, who rushed on him, a hurly-burly of
shouts and swords, and the quiet of the night was broken by the fierce
clash of steel on steel and the thundering of the frightened horse's
hoofs as he sped along the highway towards Athens.
V
THE SONG OF THE FOREST
When the noise of the clash of steel and the clatter of flying hoofs
echoed through the greenwood, Argathona leaped to her feet and the warm
color fled from her face. Simon, flatling on the grass, indifferent
to a noise the cause whereof was shrewdly guessed by him, thought the
girl more than ever akin in her pallor to those old stone statues he
had lightly noticed in that garden of pleasure in Byzantium. At that
time he decided easily that the living women who served his squandering
humor in that garden were much more fair than those ladies of old time
whom the unknown sculptor had hoped to commemorate. Now rolling the
problem over carefully through somewhat sluggish processes of thought,
he began to hold it little less than reasonable to change his mind.
"What is the matter?" the dryad cried, pressing her hands against her
breasts and widening her eyes, catlike, as she peered through the moony
gloom of the wood. Her attitude in her companion's eyes was that of a
wild creature troubled, and alert to pounce.
Simon rolled lazily on the grass and gave a self-satisfied snigger.
"I met a loon by the highway at the edge of the forest poring on a
foolish book, and his folly vexed me. Then I 'countered a covey of
thieves in the thick of the trees and told them of my blockhead coming.
From what we hear I take it that he has fallen into their fingers.
Belike they are cutting his throat at this present."
He chuckled at the ugly thought. Argathona turned upon him a pale, set
face and blazing eyes of rage.
"You will not suffer this!" she cried, indignant; "you are a strong
man."
Simon laughed again, a fat laugh, and aired his cynical philosophy.
"Marry, will I!" he answered. "Every man oaf that kills another man oaf
rids me the world of one pestilent fellow, and gives an honest man more
elbow-room."
Simon had angered the dryad much before, but now he angered her more.
Probably he had never heard of Medusa or he might have believed that
he beheld her. Argathona's adorable face was terrible to behold in its
wrath, and her tresses in the moonlight gleamed like golden serpents.
The scorn in her eyes might well have scared his bulk to stone.
"Oh, you are hateful, you humans," she protested, with hands uplifted
to heaven; and then she shrilled in a voice there was no resisting,
"Run to his help."
Very reluctantly, for his tumble still irked him, Simon found himself
obediently scrambling to his feet. The moment he stood erect Argathona
clutched hold of his right hand with her left, and in another instant
she had started to run in the direction from which the clangor came.
Simon would have liked to resist, but he might have liked equally well
to be proclaimed emperor of the East for any self-satisfactory result
his wishes were likely to have. His strong right hand was a helpless
prisoner in the grip of the girl's white fingers, and his limbs seemed
only to obey the volition communicated to them by her swift pulses.
Whether he liked it or whether he did not--and indeed he knew very
well that he did not--he was scampering at the top of his speed beside
the smoothly running maiden. Oh, the appalling rapidity of that race
through the forest! Simon, for all his bulk, had ever been counted
swift of foot among his fellows, but he had never known till that
moment what it truly meant to move swiftly. His hand captured in the
irresistible grasp of Argathona, the big man bounded along through the
alleys and over the glades of the forest trying to keep pace shoulder
to shoulder with the flying maid. It was like being tied to the tail of
a comet and careering through space; or, rather, it reminded Simon's
homely fancy of a dog he had once seen tied to a farmer's wagon when
the farmer's horse had bolted, covering ground in reluctant hurry with
trailing paws and tail. It seemed to him as if his legs no longer
touched the firm earth, but floated behind him foolishly, swimming in
the air, while his companion swept quicker than the wind through the
interminable avenues of the wood. That frenzied flight was like the
worst part of an ill dream, but it was an ill reality, and Simon's bulk
suffered wofully. His heart was strained like a swollen wine-skin, the
sweat rained from his aching body, there was not so much breath left
in his lungs as would blow a single hair from the beard of a seeding
dandelion; it was death in life to travel at that pace. After what
seemed to Simon an eternity of breakneck journeying, they swept into
a clearing of the forest fringed at the foot by the white highway. In
that clearing, as in a theatre, Simon saw a youth with his back to a
tree engaged gallantly in steel-play against a group of dusky figures
that came at him by rushes and fell off again before the steady sweep
of his long sword. Simon's breath and senses came back to him like a
trick. He saw that the man so vehemently attacked and so shamefully
outnumbered was defending himself valiantly, and he thought better of
bookworms from that instant. As he watched the craft of single man
against many, the assailants gave ground, and one of their number fell
to the earth like a log and lay there loggish. The man attacked had a
breathing span, and waited watchful with his weapon poised.
"Go to his aid," the wood-nymph whispered in Simon's ear, pointing to
the man who was fighting for his life.
Simon shook his head doggedly, thinking of the rules of his
misanthropic game. He had made up his mind to dislike mankind and
womankind, and it seemed a declination from principle to help any one
in peril of a paltry life.
"He would not thank me," he grumbled; "he is holding his own well
enough."
Even as he spoke, however, the conditions of the struggle were suddenly
altered. Again the robbers had made to rush the youth, again they
had retreated, and this time the youth, quitting the bastion of his
tree-trunk, charged his retreating foes, who fled swiftly before
him hither and thither. In making this attack he left at his rear,
unheeding, the man who had fallen, and this one, suddenly quickening
from his seeming lethargy, rose to his feet directly behind the
advancing knight, and struck at close quarters a murderous blow at
his head with what seemed to be a short club or mace. The youth gave
a groan and reeled as he turned and tried to face this unexpected
onslaught, and instantly all his enemies came swarming at him again.
"Will you not help him?" Argathona cried, in fine scorn. "Then I will."
A fallen tree-trunk lay in their way; the dryad leaped upon it just as
the harassed youth, stumbling under a second treacherous blow, tripped
and fell, and the robbers came swooping from all quarters upon their
quarry to despatch him. Argathona flung up her arms.
"Help me, help, ye forest powers," she cried, in a great voice that
seemed to Simon to fill the four corners of the world.
At the awful sound the startled robbers turned from their victim and
stared in terror at the white figure perched upon the stricken tree.
Simon to that moment had noted no signs of rising storm, though it
was no news to his experience that storms rise and fall swiftly in
the land of Greece. But on that instant it seemed to him and to the
confounded robbers that a fierce wind came roaring through the forest
while a black cloud like a dragon swallowed the moon at one bite,
drowning the wood with intolerable darkness, ripped at swift intervals
with zigzags of lightning, blindingly bright. Furious volleys of
thunder rolled through the blended terror of light and darkness, and
the clamor of heaven was horribly mimicked on earth by a bellowing as
of innumerable wild beasts, fierce citizens of the forest, disturbed
in their slumbers by the sudden hubbub. Simon, frankly frightened,
fell on his knees and tried to stammer a prayer, while the robbers,
utterly discomfited, shrieked their fears, and turning from that figure
standing preternaturally white against the blackness, fled for their
rascal lives. It appeared to Simon as he knelt that the dryad high
above him chanted a wild imprecation upon the fugitives which rang thus:
Chase them, wolves, but do not slay;
Scare them, snakes, but do not sting;
Glow-worms, guide the rogues astray;
Hedgehogs, trip them as they spring
Helter-skelter through the night,
Dumb and deaf and blind with fright.
Though Simon deemed it an age-long time before the last sound of flying
feet died away and the last words of the wood-nymph's imprecation faded
into silence, yet the storm died with a suddenness only equalled by
its birth. The thunder ceased to rumble, the lightning ceased to fly,
the great, black dragon of cloud fell asunder dissipated into a myriad
vanishing fragments, and in a quiet sky the sweet moon shone supreme
again, filling the glade with brilliance. Simon staggered to his feet
and made an end of his paternosters.
"That was a very pretty piece of work," he stammered, wiping the beads
of sweat from his wet forehead as he turned to address the wood-nymph.
The remark was intended to be a compliment, but it proved a soliloquy,
for he found that he stood and spoke alone. Argathona had already
quitted the tree-trunk and skimmed across the intervening grass to
the field of battle. She was now bending over the wounded man. Simon
followed her as quickly as he could, fearful of his own black shadow as
it trailed raggedly in the moonlight. When he reached her side Simon,
bending by her, peered into the rigid face of the fallen fighter. The
man was, indeed, his book-reading knight of the afternoon, who lay now
very still and pale in the moonlight with his eyes shut, and there was
blood upon his bright hair and blood upon his colored coat. The dryad
looked up imploringly at Simon with clasped hands and face strained
with sorrow.
"The beautiful boy!" she sighed. "What have they done to him? I hope
he is not dead. Tell me, you who are human and should understand your
kind."
Simon stooped closer over the body and examined it dexterously enough.
In the rough-and-tumble of his life he had had plenty of experience of
wounds, and knew what to do. The heart was beating satisfactorily, and
Simon nodded approval.
"Have you never seen death before?" he asked of his companion, while
his big paws began to search more gently than seemed natural to them
for the man's wounds.
Argathona wrung her hands.
"Never of human creature," she wailed; "but I still weep for the forest
creatures, the beasts and the birds and the insects who seem so happy
in their little lives."
By this time Simon had plucked open the knight's coat, and his fingers
travelled dexterously over flesh that seemed womanly white and smooth
in the moonlight.
"You are mighty compassionate," he grunted.
Argathona gave him a glance of pathetic reproval.
"I should be, being immortal," she answered, with a girlish dignity
which was quaint in such a case.
Simon nodded silently. He had forgotten the girl's claim to
immortality, but he was now very sure that she was a witch and her
words did not worry him. Patiently he finished his examination of the
body. A stroke aimed at the side had slipped on a buckle, causing
only a gash where a hole had been hoped for. The loss of blood was not
enough to account for the knight's helpless condition. Simon lifted
him carefully to one side and then saw the cause of unconsciousness.
The murderous blow that had been struck at the back of the knight's
head had been struck at close quarters, and struck to kill. It had come
pretty near to carry out its purpose, if the striking arm had been
stronger.
Simon turned an encouraging countenance to the girl's grave face.
"Your knightling is not dead nor in great danger of death, though he
has a nasty nick in the side that had better be bunged."
As he spoke he tore away a great piece of the youth's shirt and laid
bare his side while he twisted the linen to shape a bandage.
"The worst of his business is that crack at the back of the head which
has knocked him silly. It were well if we had some water."
"Let me do that," Argathona ordered, pointing to his employment. "I
know how to stanch wounds. I saved the life of a stag lately that
Alcibiades had wounded. Run you to the spring in the forest and bring
me water."
When Argathona commanded in Argathona's woodland, Simon felt that it
was for him to obey without question.
"Where is the spring?" he asked, as he rose to his feet.
Argathona drew from her girdle the myrtle-bough that she had thrust
there when they began their wild race through the forest.
"Hold this so in your hand," she showed him, "and go straightly
moonward, pressing it lightly between your palms. When it begins to
quiver and twirl in your fingers you will know that you are near the
spring. It is but a little way from here."
Simon had heard ere this of such ways of finding water, though in his
country folk did the business rather with witch-hazel than myrtle; yet
he had little doubt but that Argathona knew her woodland ways, and he
took the bough from her hands and made at the top of his speed for the
forest.
VI
LIKE UNTO ADONIS
Argathona, bending on one knee over the wounded man, lifted his
shoulders with firm, supple fingers upon the other knee, and, tenderly
supporting the bruised head with one hand, breathed quickly and
repeatedly upon his parted lips. The breath of those who are deathless
can fan the dying flame of the lamp of life till it burns again
serenely. As she worked thus, tending a mortal man for the first time,
touching the curling young head and the smooth young skin, unwonted
tremors stirred her and unwonted fancies fumed. "If it were not for
the red blood," she thought, "surely this youth might be of kin with
the immortal gods. Adonis must have looked so when he lay with his
life-blood dabbling the brake and reddening the petals of the roses,
and widowed Aphrodite wept."