all-fours, irksome to one already stiff and weary, for the natural
carriage of man, and made to think things over and to look about him.
The latter was difficult to do, at least to any great advantage. More
frequent clouds now scumbled the sky and huddled in dull clumps between
moon and earth, wherefore in the dense wood the darkness was so thick
that Simon felt as if he could pluck pieces out of it as out of a
palpable pall or curtain. But Simon was not discomfited, Simon was
not at a loss. "Here," he murmured, sagaciously, "comes in the wisdom
of your philosophic lantern." Squatting cautiously in the darkness,
after assuring himself by preliminary pattings of the absence of any
hostile snags, he fumbled in his pouch till he found flint, steel, and
tinder-box. Then after the habitual preliminary pains and failures that
darkened the lives of those that sought illumination, he succeeded in
getting a light and applying it gingerly to the candle in its iron
house. When the wick began to burn freely he hasped the door and
felt less lonely and astray. Through the thin plates of horn a pale
yellow light flowed dimly, showing like some civic lamp of fish-oil
seen through a fog. But it was at least bright enough to enable Simon
to distinguish where he was for a few paces in any direction, and
to protect himself when he started walking again from crashing with
unnecessary vehemence into unexpected tree-trunks. What was less to
the purpose was that the flickering wick seemed to stir from slumber
all manner of moths and midges, which hustled in their myriads about
lantern and lantern-carrier with a wholly unnecessary activity. But if
their attentions called for a brave display of philosophy, this was all
in the part of one who carried the lantern of Diogenes.
Having looked about him, Simon now proceeded to think things over. All
the events that had followed upon the unexpected arrival of the duchess
had passed so swiftly that he knew they had taken little time in the
happening. He had not the least idea where he was or what he should do
next. He wanted, in the second place, the road to Athens, but he did
not know where to find it; also he wanted in the first place to see
the woodland maid again, but he did not know where to find her. He was
still more than three-quarters inclined to think her mad. A lonely life
in the forest had no doubt unhinged her pretty wits, and led her to
credit all sorts of gossamer nonsense about immortality and forgotten
gods. But were she the maddest witch that ever straddled a broomstick
she was as fair as fair, and it occurred to the lantern-carrier
hopefully that perhaps now that her prince was thus beraped from
her she might be more willing to let Master Simon from Corinth play
lieutenant.
After a while he decided that the best thing for him to do was to
try to find his way back to the glade whence young Athens had been
carried, for thither the wood-maid was sure to come with the healing
herbs for her lover, and Simon's strongest purpose was the wish to see
her again. He groped his way slowly through the trees, oathing free
at sundry awkward bumps and stumbles, and endeavoring painfully to
retrace his steps over a soil that gave no indication of his passage.
But he moved with fair confidence served by occasional glimpses of the
moon, and sure that by this time the duchess would have vanished from
the goal at which he aimed. Fortune rewarded him. He had not travelled
very far when he caught a glimpse of a clearing through the trees, and
hastening his speed he soon broke from the wood and found that he had,
indeed, returned to the scene of the night's adventure. Here was the
glade newly trampled with the coming and going of many feet, here were
the marks of horses' hoofs on the grass, here was the slight hollow in
the turf where the youth's body had lain. The place seemed strangely
deserted now which had so short a while before been populous. Surely
the girl would come soon, Simon thought. He lowered his lantern to the
ground and humped himself beside it, resolved on waiting, and wishing
he had a store of food and drink with him to cheer the waiting-time.
He had not long to wait. There came a gleam of whiteness through the
trees, the gleam of a white body garmented in white stuff. Another
moment and Argathona emerged from the forest and came running across
the grass towards him. She was holding the skirts of her smock in both
hands to form a kind of sack, and in this sack she carried herbs. As
she came near to Simon she shook what she carried in a heap upon the
sward and leaped forward to where her lover had lain. Then she gave a
great cry as she saw that Simon sat there alone.
"Where is he?" she asked, an agony in her voice.
Simon was glad to see the girl again, but sorely against his will he
found himself a sharer in her sorrow, and could almost have wished
young Athens back again between them to conjure away the pathos of her
look. He rose up to answer her, honestly sorry for her flagrant sorrow,
painfully conscious that it was not for him to bring her consolation.
"Gone," he said, simply. It was all he could find to say on the
instant; it really seemed all there was to say.
"Gone!" she echoed, and it seemed to Simon as if the woes of all
unhappy lovers in the world seemed to flow mournful through her lips.
He nodded his head and spoke soberly, gently, weighing his words:
"In your absence there came a great lady riding by, the duchess she of
Thebes, no less, with a large escort. She saw your young gentleman
sprawling on his back in the moonlight, and, seeing him, seemed to know
him and to show a fancy for his fair face. So when she had tickled him
out of his swoon she persuaded him, as I take it, for her voice carried
far and I could catch snatches of her speech in the stillness, that you
were no more than the doll of a dream and that it was she, the duchess,
who had tended him in his time of peril, she who had changed troth
with him, she who had taken his ring which indeed lay on the grass for
any chance-by to handle, she who had given him a ring in exchange,
for indeed she did thrust a ring on his finger while he slumbered. I
suppose in the end he gobbled her story, which seemed, on the face of
it, plain and specious. Anyway, she gave him wine to drink which sent
him to sleep like a baby, and so without more ado she bundled him off
to Athens."
Simon paused after this patter of narrative. To his surprise the girl
had mastered her instant grief, and her countenance carried its former
air of sweet serenity. The tears had dried from her eyes; the fear had
faded from her cheeks; only she seemed to regard Simon now with cold,
accusing mien.
"Did you do nothing to stay her?" she asked, and there was that
stroke of reproach in her voice which made Simon feel, he knew not
exactly why, as if he had betrayed a friend. But he answered bluffly
enough, putting a bold face on his conduct, for, after all, maugre her
strength, she was only a slip of a she-wizard and he a bearded man
little accountable to such jills.
"I am a soldier of fortune," he blustered, "and it is not the way of
my trade to take sides in a squabble unless I be paid for it. But if I
had been fool enough to thrust my nose into another's quarrel, there
was nothing of any purpose to do, for my high-mighty lady the duchess
had fifty or so stout fellows with her, more than I could tackle. I was
in a kind my lady's prisoner, and if I had not contrived to slip aside
into the wood while she was plying him with the wine it is like she
would have carried me, too, to Athens, and indeed it was not part of my
plans to travel thither in such fashion."
Argathona seemed to be listening to Simon, but in truth she was paying
little heed to his surly speech. She was looking steadfastly at the
white ribbon of road which skirted the glade and ran, a highway, to
Athens, and her face showed only the composure of a noble hope.
"He does not love her," she murmured to herself, and her words flowed
with the motion of some proud and ancient song. "It is I whom he loves,
I who love him."
Simon hoisted his shoulders to his ears. These amatory flights were
not to his mind, for he took himself to be in a free field, and he was
mulishly set to push his own case.
"He may live content enough with his bargain," he asserted. "Lady
Esclaramonde of Thebes is a great lady and a wealthy and a fair, with
broad lands for her dower--a better match, saving your presence, for
young Athens than a wood-wench in a wood."
Argathona looked at him now with the same air of triumphant patience.
"You do not understand us," she said. "If it were for his welfare to
leave me I would not hinder him. If it made for his happiness, now and
hereafter, to dwell with this woman I would not hurt his life. But I
have looked into his eyes and I know that he loves me as I love him."
Simon resented sharply this harping on a single string. The Athenian
prince was not the only man in the world, nor the only man in Greece.
There was a stout fellow at that moment, hailing lately from Corinth
and earlier from Rouen, well worthy of any maid's eye.
"Be wise," he counselled, jovially, slapping his broad chest. "The
boy has gone and there is an end of the adventure. Let by-gones be
by-gones, and look more favorably upon one whom war and the world have
mellowed to a ripe prime. A green goose makes a sour sweetheart. Here
is a trained hawk to your hand. I will abide with you in the woodland
cheerfully if you give me the wink of a lid."
Simon felt that he was acting most handsomely, and he beamed. But
Argathona surveyed him with very much that show of scorn which an armed
and haughty amazon might have vouchsafed to some woosome, presuming
satyr who dared to waylay her on a hunting morning.
"I am glad the world you serve is not all made up of men like you," she
said, quietly, and then she turned her calm eyes again upon the white
highway.
Simon laughed dryly, but he felt that he grinned on the wrong side of
his visage, for it vexed him sorely to find the maid so stubborn.
"Alack the day, no," he answered, gruffly. "Believe me, pretty
mistress, I show better than the bulk. I am but quarter bad, like a
clipped coin, and such as I am it is no offence for me to cherish you."
Argathona answered him more gently.
"You are well enough when you do not fret me with foolish words. But
you do not speak of a cheerful world."
Simon was perplexed.
"What a saint's name does it matter to you how the world is compassed?"
Argathona understood the drift of his question.
"I am going into the world," she said, with decision.
Simon stared into her fine face. If one of the trees round about him
had taken unto itself a vegetable voice, and told him as much of its
intended travels in speech familiar to his French ears, he could
scarcely have been more gravelled.
"You are going into the world," he growled, and the growl in his voice
was meant to make it very plain to the girl that he thought she was
talking nonsense.
But the girl answered his growling with the same unchangeable voice
flowing from the same unchangeable countenance.
"I am going into the world to save my lover."
Simon was now one part diverted and three parts vexed at the girl's
pertinacity. It was aggressively plain to him that she made far too
much of one man at the expense of another, with nothing that he could
see to warrant the partisanship.
"How will you find your way?" he questioned, drolly, mocking with eyes
and tongue, and he thought he had posed her. But the girl's blithe face
remained untroubled in its tranquillity of resolve.
"I shall find my way to my lover," she cried, and her voice rang in his
hearing like the hunter's horn at the find of the deer. "My lover needs
me; my lover is in danger; wherever he is my lover is alone without me
as I am alone without him. I know that it were better for both of us
not to be than to exist apart."
Simon laughed lustily, venting his spleen so, and the false thunder in
his lungs shook his bulk as a sudden breeze shakes the flag-iris in the
sedges. When he had done crowing and could speak like a Christian again:
"I have never known any lad to speak so for the loss of a lass," he
assured her.
The dryad turned her unfathomable eyes on her jeering companion, and
somehow, all of a sudden, his jesting seemed to lose its savor.
"There cannot be many men like my lover," she said, with clean
assurance. "You have tramped so much through a muddy world and taken
such stain in your travels that you have lost the thoughts of the
solitudes and the sacred places. But here is the greenwood way of
it. We have changed loves, he and I; we have changed hearts, he and
I; where one is the other must be, though all the seas and all the
mountains lie between us. If he be kept from me by guile I must win my
way to him by craft, for that I know is what he would have me do."
Simon nursed his nose thoughtfully with his finger and thumb, eying the
valiant lass and pondering as to whether she really meant what she said
or whether all this ecstasy were only plain proof of the madness he
shrewdly suspected.
"I wish you were a more reasonable rusticity," he grumbled. "The
Duchess of Thebes is a very great, dangerous lady. I heard tell of
her in Corinth that she dabbled in sorcery and was so skilled in the
distillation of philtres that if ever a man drank a draught of her
brewing he became her slave soul and body. What can your country-side
courage do against her?"
Argathona's eyes radiated pity on his ignorance.
"I am of kin with the gods," she reminded him, austerely proud.
Simon twisted his features with a whimsical grimace that meant
compassion for her madness and mirth at her earnestness.
"The gods will be of no use to you in the world beyond this wood. I do
not know where they have gone, and in this regard you seem no morsel
wiser than I, for all your phrases; but we seem to be both agreed in
this, that they have gone, and in my world men raise shrines and altars
to unite other powers."
"I think I shall still find love honored in the world," the dryad
replied, confidently.
Simon whistled softly the fag end of a friendly drinking-song before he
spoke. He was thinking grimly of what he and others like him honored as
love in the world below the wood.
"I doubt if you would know the God of Love in some of his changes," he
said at last. Then he went on, remembering and correcting: "Yet, as I
am told, they hold pretty parliaments of love in Athens where jolly
lords and dainty ladies wrangle to infinity over touches and phrases
and prove very finical in discrimination."
Argathona was not disturbed by his doubts; she sang the same song of
Olympian assurance to his unwilling ears.
"My lover bears my heart in his body and I bear his in mine. I will
follow him to Athens; if needs must, I will follow him to the ends of
the earth."
Simon tickled at his beard, looking at her with a dismal pity while he
strove to light love's candles in the windows of his eyes and to speak
to her wooingly, for he still cherished a desperate, dwindling hope for
himself in the venture. So he again hazarded discouragement.
"You will spare yourself many pains and aches if you stay in the
forest. Why can you not listen to me?" Even as he entreated he read
in her face that his wooing was vanity, and he ended angrily in a
challenge.
"I believe you would listen to me if I wore a silk coat and carried a
smooth face."
The dryad smiled, divinely patient of his peevish speech.
"I would not listen to you," she said, "if you wore the robe of Zeus or
showed like Apollo."
She turned away from him and stretched out her white arms towards the
dark wood.
"Dear forest, where I have lived so long, the time has come when we
must part. Dear birds and beasts, I must say you farewell. For I follow
the forest law and I go to seek my mate."
Simon looked at her with a new wonder and a new approbation in his eyes.
"You are resolved?" he asked, and the girl answered him irrevocably:
"I am resolved."
"Then," said Simon, "I think I may blow out my lantern," and on the
word he swung his lantern to the height of his face and drew back its
door. Pursing his lips he whistled a curfew call, and his breath puffed
out the feeble light of the candle.
"Why do you do that?" Argathona asked, with the naïve curiosity of a
child.
Simon turned his head to Argathona, and the look on his face was at
once roguish and reverential.
"I carry this lantern," he said, "daytime and nighttime, like my
old-time pattern, looking for an honest fellow-being, a thing I could
not find in Corinth and doubted to find in Athens. But now I believe I
have found a true woman, for I call you a woman, by your leave, though
you choose to call yourself immortal. Wherefore, out goes my sceptical
glimmer, and if you are willing I will go with you to Athens as your
honest friend and true servant; and, indeed, I think I may prove of
service, for I know something of the rough edge of the world."
"You may come if you choose," Argathona answered, "and you shall give
me advice, for I am strange to men and cities."
"Faith," said Simon, bluntly, "to begin with, you cannot go as you now
are. Women wear other gear in these years of grace. I cannot say that
they look better than you do, but truly they look very different."
"I shall not go as a woman," Argathona answered. "I shall go as a man."
Then, seeing that Simon stared at her with the greatest amazement his
face had yet worn, she went on:
"Is not a man's life a good life still to live in Greece, as it was in
the ancient days?"
Had Simon been blessed with a graver temper he could not choose but
laugh.
"By the rood," he swore, "a man's life is as round a dish and as full
of meat as ever, but 'tis never a dish for a maid to nibble at. Why,
a man's life is a bustling, brawling business, noisy and jocund. Your
true man is ever eating, drinking, loving, fighting. When there be no
real wars for him to break heads in, he betters the heavy peace with a
tournament."
The dryad's eyes looked inquiry, and Simon, guessing what she would
know, expanded his matter.
"Your tournament," he explained, "is a brave game by which knights who
are weary of idleness and quiet times put on their armor and take up
their arms, and bang each other lustily in an appointed place just as
if they were enemies, though for the most part they are honest friends
and bear no malice for thrustings and thwackings."
Argathona's eyes widened and brightened as if she desired to win a
prize in such kind of diversion, and her words showed her thoughts.
"If there be such jolly sports to share yonder," she cried, "then I
must play my part in them."
Simon really hardly knew whether he ought to laugh or to cry at the
simplicity of the witch.
"What a devil should a slim maid, be she woman or warlock, do at a
tourney?" he gaped.
Argathona laughed a little at his bewilderment, and her laughter was
pleasant as the piping of summer wind among summer thickets.
"Friend," she said, "you have seen that I am no weakling. Truly I have
the strength of the strongest amazon that ever drew bow, and the
amazons were as strong as the companions of Theseus. And I doubt if the
men of to-day have the strength of the fellowship of Theseus."
Simon was inclined to resent the imputation cast upon an age that he
adorned, but, remembering betimes that the girl who faced him had made
so little ado with his strength, he grinned weakly and held his peace
on that matter. Argathona continued:
"While I play a man's part in Athens I will find a way to save my
lover, if he be ensnared as you say. For if I go as a man this woman of
Thebes will welcome me as a friend."
Simon wagged his red head approvingly.
"By my faith," he said, "you seem strong enough and wise enough to
wander the world alone; but I will go with you and serve you, because
I love you, and I can teach you something of the world's ways that may
help you, a stranger. But you are wise to go as a man if you think you
will look like one."
"Friend," replied Argathona, "we of the woodland can use the woodland
glamour, and what we strongly wish men to see us and think us I believe
you will find that they so see and think. To-night we will rest in the
forest; to-morrow we will make for Athens."
"Where is your male attire?" Simon questioned, dubiously. "For my part
I have nothing but the rags I stand in."
Argathona laughed blithely.
"Let not that vex you. There are shepherds in the valley, and you shall
go to these shepherds and buy for me a sheepskin suit and a shepherd's
pipe and crook." Seeing a frown on Simon's face, she went on: "It may
be that you have no coin in your scrip." Simon nodded bashfully. "That
need not trouble you neither, for this wood holds many hidden treasures
whose lurking-places are known to me, so I will find you a piece of
gold for the shepherds. Then as a shepherd I will pass to Athens."
"Nay," Simon commented, gravely, "it will never do for you and me to
trip into Athens at all adventure, stout man and slim maid, with no
tellable tale to back them. Here is my rede, that we rest a full day in
the forest while I tell you so much of the ways of us who live at the
end of time as will serve you to play your part with persuasion."
Argathona nodded, wise enough to read the wisdom in his words.
"It shall be as you say," she agreed. "We will abide a day in the
woodland and you shall lesson me in the ways of men of the Iron Age."
So said, so done. From the dawn of the next day to the same day's
dusk Argathona sat at the feet of the soldier of fortune and listened
while he spoke. He told her of the world as he knew it, a fair world
made for Frenchmen to rule. He told her of its kings and its captains,
and of the names and lineages and lives of those who now lorded it in
Greece. Because he had a shrewd wit, with caustic words to lackey it,
he made his tongue's puppets live more human than they always showed
in knightly histories and monkish scripts. He painted frank pictures
of great ladies, too; told truths of the customs of men with women
and of women with men, and little doubting that he was doing aught to
distinguish with praise, proved himself an excellent chronicler. But of
the great faith of the world he spoke scantly and dully, caring for it
little, understanding it less, and taking it for granted tranquilly as
him seemed a soldier should. On her side, Argathona, keen to learn much
about the living things she had to play with and strive against, eager
to teach her age-long ignorance the game of the gray world, she had
very little curiosity about the faith that had banished the gods of her
infancy. And so she listened and learned much and learned little, and
one more Attic day of all her wealth of days waxed and waned and left
her as it found her, divinely young.
XI
THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
From the days when the Christian faith was born in Galilee of Judea,
from the days when Hellas became portion and parcel of the Roman
empire, the glory of Athens dwindled and withered through the centuries
for more than a thousand years. Paul preached. Nero plundered.
Philopappus patronized. Hadrian adorned. Herodes commemorated the
loved and lost Regilla. Neo-Platonism persuaded its followers that the
lamp of the Academy was still alight. The terror of the north swept
upon the city as Spartan and Persian had swept upon her, only more
bloody and more merciless than both, to be beaten back for a season by
the waning strength of the Roman arms. The gleaming image of Athena
stayed the rage of the triumphant Alaric, but could not stay the envy
of Constantinople. Byzantium stripped Athens of her riches; Byzantium
silenced the voices of her philosophers. Gloom of night settled upon
the sacred place for generations till, after the fourth crusade and
the fall of Constantinople, Boniface of Montserrat came to turn the
Parthenon from a Greek church to a Roman Catholic cathedral, and the
city of Theseus into a Frankish duchy. In the dawn of the thirteenth
century Otho of the Rock became grand sire of Athens, and he and the
descendants of his house ruled for a century, till the time came for
Baldwin to take the throne.