fell warm upon the cold face and kindled color in it, for the tears of
those that are deathless quicken the flesh as the rains from heaven
quicken the earth. After a little the youth opened his eyes and looked
up in wonder at the beautiful, sad face that compassionated him, the
beautiful body that neighbored him.
"Who are you?" he asked, faintly, wondering where he was, for his wits
were still wool-gathering, and wondering why his voice sounded so weak
and foolish to him, as voices sometimes sound in dreams.
"I am--" Argathona began, and faltered. She thought that she would not
again tell a stranger the truth about herself and be doubted, as Simon
had doubted her, so she changed her purpose a little and went on:
"I am a woman, and I live in this wood."
Rainouart struggled somewhat to get up, for it vexed his strength
exceedingly to feel helpless and it fretted his courtesy to trouble a
woman with such care of him. But Argathona gently laid a hand upon his
breast, and for all his strength he could not resist that pressure, and
she kept him pillowed on her knee. He put a hand that seemed unusually
clumsy to his aching head, and then stared in amazement at his naked
chest and weakly strove to claw his coat together. Argathona whispered
to him very softly, and he understood her without marvelling, being
unable for the moment to marvel at anything.
"Robbers set on you--wounded you."
Again Rainouart struggled to rise.
"Now I remember," he said, fiercely; and looking about him, though it
hurt him much to move his head, he saw how his sword lay on the grass
a-nigh him, and he made a grab for the weapon. But Argathona put her
beautiful, strong arms about him, and held him thus while she whispered
motherly to him, as children have whispered to their dolls since the
first child played with the first mandrake:
"You must keep still; you are sorely hurt, but I have stanched the
blood."
Rainouart's wits were none too muddled to forget reverence. He stooped
his head and kissed the girl's hands where they met about his breast.
The touch of his lips upon her seemed to sting her virgin flesh through
to the pure heart, and she unclasped her hands with a little moan.
Rainouart looked up at her.
"Why do you cry out? Why do you withdraw your hands? My gratitude would
never offend you."
"You do not offend me," Argathona whispered, very softly, so softly
that he could scarcely hear her. But he did hear her, and so hearing he
now wondered, as Simon before him had wondered, how it happened that
his own dear French speech should sound at all strange to him. As the
girl's hands no longer restrained him, he struggled a little and sat
erect, and stared into her eyes as she kneeled beside him. His troubled
thoughts seemed to lapse again into a trance; surely he had strayed in
the guarded garden, surely he lay in the mystical pleasance, surely he
had touched with his lips the petals of the noble rose.
"What is your name?" he whispered, and she told him, and he repeated it
softly, "Argathona," and found it very sweet to say and hear.
"When I kissed your hands, Argathona," he murmured, "all the pain of
my wounds seemed to leave me, and I drew new life, new vigor, from the
kiss. But when you withdraw your touch from me the smart returns and
my head aches wearily. If you will let me kiss your hands once more I
think that would surely banish pain."
He pleaded not because he dreaded to bear pain, but because he longed
with all his heart to kiss her hands again, and he hoped to win her to
yield through pity. He asked no more in his speech than to kiss her
hands, and he asked no more in his heart. For this, though he knew it
not, was his first acquaintance with the meaning of love, and his white
chivalry would have died blithely for less grace than this from the
loved one.
"You must not suffer pain," the girl said, looking with troubled doubt
into his bright, mortal eyes. For this, though she knew it not, was
her first acquaintance with the meaning of love. Then she yielded her
hands to him sweetly as one who, being great, grants a favor, and
granting it is glad to be humble in the granting. The young French
knight took her white fingers in his and kissed them very tenderly,
very courteously, and as he kissed them he looked up into her pitying
eyes and longed to weep for the very keenness of the joy that filled
his being. It seemed to him on the instant that he had waited through
all the love-loneliness of his spring for the touch of those hands, for
the regard of those eyes. Surely Lord Love had locked his heart with a
golden key, to keep it as a shrine vacant till this hour and dedicated
to this image.
"You have the most wonderful hands in all the world," he stammered,
tremulous with a sense of intimate revelation. "Their touch yields
life. But you have the most wonderful face in the world, the most
wonderful eyes."
He had clean forgotten how he came there, he had clean forgotten
Athens, forgotten everything except the glorious certainty that he had
found the rose of the world. Argathona neared her face to his till she
almost touched his cheek with her lips. She knew with the wisdom of the
wood that he spoke the truth of his heart. She would have known even,
if she had been wise in the wisdom of the world, from the loyalty of
his voice, and she gave back the truth of her heart with the frankness
of the dawn of time.
"Your hands are strong and shapely, like the hands of the gods; your
eyes are bright, like the eyes of the gods; you are good to behold."
Rainouart colored, a little bashful as a gallant lad should be at the
high praise of a fair girl, and tried, manlike, to put it by in spite
of his wild pleasure at its sound and sense.
"So long as a man be brave, it matters little how he be formed and
featured, at least so all men say, but I have heard that some ladies
think otherwise." And he smiled shyly at her, hotly glad that she
should think well of him, spirit and substance together glad to
madness with happiness.
The dryad looked at him gravely. "Are there many mortals like this,"
she pondered--"so modest, so brave, so fair?" Her heart assured her
that this must be the pride and idol of the time.
"Comeliness is a mark of the favor of the gods," she asserted.
Rainouart pressed her hands closely, his spirit rekindling at the
exquisite contact, his soul desiring nothing better than this bright
hour. Yet he wondered at her words.
"Why do you speak like a pagan?" he asked. "The gods have gone long
ago."
The dryad sighed as she thought of the splendid figures riding to the
twilight land. Was it yesterday?
"Ay," she sighed, "the gods have gone long ago," and she stared across
the moonlit space into the blackness of the wood, and wondered what had
happened to her which had changed so strangely the ancient way.
There was a little silence; mortal and immortal troubled with new
thoughts. Then Rainouart made to rise. It was strangely sweet to lie
there supported by this woman's arms; but Rainouart was a man and a
knight, and must not presume on a fair lady's patience. So he got to
his knees, and she helped him to his feet with her strength, which
could have aided a greater than he; and they stood face to face in the
moonlight, mortal boy and immortal girl, and to both alike the moment
of mortal immortality had come. The night wind was very quiet, the wood
seemed still with a kind of sacred stillness; it was as if the world
were asleep and only they awake in all the world. The hearts of youth
beat with the mutual pulses of a great passion.
VII
LOVE IS ENOUGH
The maid gazed at the man wistfully, a-quiver with mysterious hopes and
fears.
"What god do you serve?" she faltered, her memory all alive with the
divine faces and the shining forms and that calm, tragic procession to
the shadowland.
Rainouart bowed his head, meekly devotional as his devout mother, and
crossed himself slowly while he prayed a prayer.
"Messire Christ Jesus, who died for all men and for me, a sinner,
thirteen hundred years ago. What other Lord may a knight serve? Do you
take me for a follower of Mohammed?"
To Argathona neither name had any meaning. The beautiful gods her
babehood knew had journeyed to the sunless land, and her mother had
told her how a great voice, louder than all the winds that fill the
sky, had cried abroad that great Pan was dead. She had always heard of
a power mightier than the gods. That power had triumphed; she knew no
more, she asked no more.
"I take you for a brave man," she said, looking him full in the face,
and she looked many things that she could not say. In the conquering
spell of that night of springtime his glorious youth seemed as abiding
as hers, and she forgot to pity his dower of frailty or her dower of
endurance, surrendering to a greater force than pity. To the man it
seemed as if he, standing there holding this unknown woman's hands
and drowning in this unknown woman's eyes, had learned in one noble
moment the sacred secret of life, the reason why it is worth while to
exist and to endure, live hardily a man's hard life, die firmly a man's
inevitable death. All his spirit was at his lips as he spoke, his hands
clinging to the clasp of her hands. For he knew that he had come to the
crown of his life, that he had caught the clew that he was seeking,
that he had found the noble rose.
"Pray God you take me for your loyal lover. My soul has lived alone
for this moment, my little life has been spared for this grace." So he
began, and then for the first time in all her age-long life the dryad
heard the splendid, the terrible words that govern the reeling world.
"I love you," the man cried from the heart of his heart, and again,
"I love you," and yet again, "I love you"--the mystical three words
repeated mystically three times, as is meet in the litany of love. He
would have caught her in his arms, but she held his hands fast, and for
all his strength he could not pluck them away from her grasp. Joy and
sorrow struggled for the supremacy of her being.
"Do you really love me, you mortal man, me whom you have never seen
before this night?" she asked, with a tender pity, with a tender irony.
The pity was for him, the about-to-die loving the undying; the irony
was for her, that she spoke with the speech of doubt knowing with all
her heart that he loved her, knowing with all her heart that she loved
him.
"I am a mortal man," Rainouart answered, passionately, "as you are
a mortal woman; but love is immortal, and true knights who are true
lovers only think so of love. They ride and they ride and they see
fair faces in lattice or orchard, and they vow the world is a pleasant
place; but they pay no heed to the fair faces, and they ride on in the
quest of the rose. Then at a thoughtless turn of the road they see
one face and the world is heaven or hell--heaven if they win and wear
the rose, hell if they may not attain to its petals. No, not so," he
corrected himself, quickly, "for to love the loveliest is well whether
she smile or frown, and so, come what may, it is my glory to love you,
but I wish you could love me a little."
She answered in racking anguish to the rapture of the man:
"I think I could love you very dearly, but I do not think it would be
wise."
"Do not mistrust me," he pleaded. "I could be nothing but loyal to my
lover, loyal to the death."
As the words rang from his lips Argathona gave a great cry, and loosing
her hold of him covered her face with her hands like a frightened
child, and her body shook with sobs.
"Alas, to the death!" she wailed, shuddering at the gulf between them
and the doom laid upon immortals to see their mortal lovers die.
Rainouart trembled; liberated from her fingers, his life seemed to ebb
again furiously, the very strength her touch had given him made him the
weaker at the withdrawal of that contact. His wound ran red anew, and
the hurt in his head burned horridly. But he cried vehemently, catching
at his breath:
"We must all die, young or old, gentle or simple; but we die in the
hope of salvation, and to-day we two live, to-day I love you, to-day I
pray God that you may love me."
She was stirred by his passionate enthusiasm, by the vehemence of his
speech, by the earnest meaning in his eyes. Loving him, she was eager
to be loved according to the simple creed of the woodland, and she
tried like him to forget the unavoidable.
"Give me your love," he cried to her again. "Give me your love. Come
with me into the wide world. I am Rainouart of the Rock, son of the
Duke of Athens. You shall live like a queen in the sweet city."
A sudden pain tugged at the dryad's heart, and she shook her head
sadly. This was not what she understood by love, to go and dwell among
mortals and watch them die as summer flies die in a day.
"If I gave you my love," she said, "I could not go with you into the
wide world. My life is here in the ancient wood."
Resolve ruled Rainouart's forehead with strong lines. He was so sure
that this was the love of his life, and that to love like this was
truly to live, that he was ready to pay his price for paradise.
"Then I will dwell with you in the ancient wood," he answered. "The
world is a fine place, full of color and music and honorable strife,
but true love is better than all things, and if you love me I will
dwell with you in the ancient wood."
The dryad sighed. She longed with all her heart to say yes, longed and
dared not. She knew now how her mother felt when the Greek youth wooed
her in the days before the heroes sailed to Troy.
"It may not be," she said, but she said it half-heartedly, petitioning
secretly if, after all, it might not be. Perhaps she might keep his
spirit alive within him with her immortal lips, perhaps she might hold
death off with her immortal arms as the demi-god Herakles did when he
brought back Alkestis.
The impetuous Rainouart, lip-deep in love, made light of her denial.
Heaven had been very gracious to him and he would not lose the rose.
What was there to weep for in his father's court? Could its drunken
chief and dissolute women and debauched princes restrain him from the
religious quiet of the wood? What was there in all Athens to be set
against a moment of Argathona's love?
"It must be," he persisted; "we are troth-plighted, you and I. We have
exchanged loves and hearts and cannot deny it."
He drew a ring from his finger as he spoke, a heavy gold ring cunningly
carved with the image of our Lord upon the tree, and set about with
little studs of gold wherewith to say the rosary.
"This is my Master and thine," he whispered. "Wear it and be mine."
She put the ring and his hand away from her, troubled by his words and
by the unknown image on the ring. Rainouart misunderstood her gesture.
"Dear," he protested, "I mean all honor and honesty with you. With this
ring I will wed you. Hear, my dear lady. A little way beyond the wood
between here and Athens there lives apart a holy man; let us go to him
hand-in-hand that he may make us man and wife."
The dryad tried painfully and vainly to understand his meaning. What
had their loves to do with the little hermitage at the foot of the
hill and the lonely man who lived there? To wed meant to her to give
herself hand and heart and all to the lover whom she loved, and if ever
she dreamed on summer days and nights of what love could be it was as
of something that might come to pass when the gods returned, as they
surely would one day return from the twilight land. Now she knew that
she loved this mortal wholly, now she knew that this mortal loved her
wholly, and now, looking at her mortal lover, she knew that he was
in peril of the melancholy disease, the ceasing, which mortals call
death. For since she had unclasped her hands from his hands his face
had grown pale again which had warmed at her touch, and his energies
had ebbed with the warmth of his wooing, and his senses sickened with
the dizziness in his head. She clasped him again, but her touch could
no longer quicken his vitality as keenly as before, for her powers were
weaker through love of a mortal. He slipped from her arms upon the
grass and his face was grown suddenly gray.
"What has happened," he moaned, "that a scratch can so unman me?"
Argathona bent over him, consoling, comforting, loving.
"I must find the herb of healing," she said. "It hides in the heart of
the wood. Sleep here for a little till I return."
She breathed softly upon his forehead willing him to sleep, and the
youth's drawn face softened, his limbs relaxed, and he lay motionless
upon the turf. A stranger would have guessed that he was dead, but
Argathona knew better; she knew that the youth lay drowned in a
dreamless, soothing slumber.
"Sleep," she murmured--"sleep till I return with the herb of healing."
Tears flooded her eyes making the moonlight dim, and she beat at her
breasts.
"Alas! I cannot deny to love him. My mother's fate is mine, for I love
a mortal, and my lover will die in a day and I shall live unhappy till
the gods ride back from the twilight land."
She turned from her sleeping lover and ran swifter than a stag across
the moonlit space and dived into the darkness of the wood.
VIII
SIMON SPIES
When the wonderful lovers were speaking together, unstained youth and
stainless maid, neither of them dreamed that human eyes were watching
them from the thicket; but it was so. Simon, twisting and twiddling
the myrtle-bough between his big fingers, had picked his way through
the forest till the twig began to spin of itself, and then he found
the clear fountain and filled his gourd, after satisfying that private
thirst of his own which an unmoistened supper of onions had done
much to stimulate. He was in no great heat of enthusiasm about the
book-reading youth whom the dryad had rescued. He admitted him a brave
fellow, but that was nothing; it was no more than a man's business to
be brave, and if the wood-girl must like a brave fellow, why could not
Simon serve her turn? He grumbled to himself as he went and returned
that he believed the minx had sent him to the water-pool on purpose
that she might be left alone with the lad; and he reflected cynically,
with a cynicism worthy of such a lickerish lantern-bearer, that a woman
is a woman though she be a thousand years old and is pleased to call
herself immortal.
Such an aggrieved, sour humor is apt to grow with much dandling and
patting, and Simon was in a simmering bad temper with destiny and the
sisters three when he reached the fringe of the glade and saw the youth
and the maiden standing together. He paused, unseen, unheeded, on the
farther side of darkness, rubbing his bristling chin. They looked to
be of very good accord together, and his blood boiled at their amity.
"It were a shame to spoil sport," he said to himself, apologetically,
for what he was about to do, as he drew back a little deeper into the
wood, still unseen and unheard. Then, "it were a shame to lose sport,"
he added, more truthfully to his itching curiosity, and dropping
noiselessly on his hands and knees he proceeded to crawl very quietly
towards a part of the wood nearer to the pair from which he might
certainly oversee their deeds better, and also possibly overhear their
words.
He moved quite stealthily and swiftly for his volume of body, for
he had learned the primals of forest strategy when he served his
apprenticeship to war under Philip the Fair, and his celerity of
passage was accompanied by little rustling. At another time, though he
did not know this, he could not have hoped to scramble so through the
brushwood unperceived by the woodland sense of Argathona, but contact
with a mortal sometimes dulls the immortal wit, and Argathona was
absorbed by other than woodland thoughts. Indeed, if some faint sound
of his patient progress had troubled the night, it would have fallen
unheeded on the ears of those two who were wading straight from the
shallows into the deeps of love.
At last Simon found his profitable lair and lay hunched up in the
darkness with his chin propped on his fists, watching the boy and girl.
He interpreted their gestures with a raging heart, hearing now and then
something of the words they spoke, for the night was very still. His
torpid sense of honor was untroubled by this playing of the spy, for he
felt now a very personal sense of enmity to the stranger knight who, as
he was inclined to phrase it, had taken his wood-girl away from him. It
was Simon's simple creed that if he cast his eyes upon a girl in favor,
that girl was his by right; wherefore he watched the mutual wooing
with hot eyes of wrath, and there were wild moments when he longed to
leap out upon the pair, slay the man, and seize the girl--and perhaps
he would have done so had he not been mortally afraid of the maid. But
when he saw the youth reclining upon the grass and Argathona bending
so tenderly over him, pity began to pull at his heartstrings sorely
against his will--pity for the maid, naturally, not pity for the man.
When the dryad, after breathing sleep on the face of her lover,
disappeared into the forest Simon groped cautiously from his cover
and moved stealthily over the moonlit space to the side of the
sleeping man. He looked down upon the young, still face of Rainouart,
rubbing his russet chin thoughtfully as he shrugged his shoulders in
astonishment.
"What does she see," he asked himself, "in that smooth, unmeaning face
that she prefers him to me--to me who know what love means, and war,
and how to love women, and carry my liquor, and who never wasted time
over a silly, painted book?"
That same painted book was still in the pouch of the young man's
girdle, where he had thrust it when he had come from his reverie. There
was a corner sticking out and it caught Simon's eye. He stooped and
pulled the book from its concealment, a little square of vellum pages,
scribed in a fine, clerkly hand, craftily enriched with pictures, and
he balanced it curiously on his palm.
"What was there," he asked himself, "in such a lump of ink-stained,
pigmented parchment to make a man forget that he was alive?"
Then, after a moment's hesitation, he slipped the volume into his own
pouch as a lawful prize, resolving at some future time to see what
he could make of its pages. The glimpse of the little, painted book
fiercely rekindled his old resentment, which had withered a little at
the sight of his enemy lying helpless on the grass. His fingers slipped
to the horn handle of the knife that nestled in his girdle, and he
moved it up and down from its sheath, enjoying grimly the slipperiness
of the steel in the leather. Presently he plucked the blade bare and
contemplated its brightness.
"It is but jamming this to the hilt," he thought, "in that quiet, white
flesh, and the Duchy of Athens were sadly lacking an heir, and my white
witch were sadly in want of a lover."
It was an alluring thought for a very unscrupulous fellow, but he
pushed it aside at last, ramming the knife home with an oath, although
he made a wry face at his abnegation. "The pretty witch would weep
and her tears would grieve me," he thought; "and, besides, the fool
is asleep and at my advantage, and belike he has not the blood left
to fight with if I kicked him into waking and challenged him to fair
battle."
As he thus reluctantly refused murder, he noticed that something
glittered on the grass by the side of the sleeping man. Simon stooped
and picked it up, and examined it carefully in the moonlight. It was a
big, gold ring admirably wrought with the image of the Saviour of the
world upon the tree, and set with little studs about the circle for the
saying of the rosary.
"By the mass!" said Simon to the surrounding silence, "this is the
ring he offered her." But even as he spoke thus, and as he weighed the
ring in his palm, he was made aware that he might speak to silence no
longer.
IX
THE DUCHESS OF THEBES