Rouen in the woodlands such a little while ago. Then she told of all
that had happened since, of her encounter with the wounded knight that
proved to be the young Prince of Athens, and of their plighted loves,
and of the treachery of Esclaramonde, and of her visit to Athens and
what came of it, and of her resolve to wait in the greenwood till her
true-love came to find her. While she spoke the old man listened in
silence, and though there was much in her story to marvel at, yet in
his eyes there was no signal of disbelief, and the hope burned hotly
in his heart that it might be vouchsafed to him to save this spirit.
When Argathona had told her story he turned to her, and his eyes were
vessels of pity and his voice was the promise of charity. Gently he
bade her sit by him on the grass beneath the image of silver, and
tenderly he bade her hearken to the words he had to say. And Argathona
obeyed him and sat by him, watching his face and feeding on his words
in silence.
Then the old man told her the story of the Redeemer. He told of the
prophecy and the fulfilment, the angel and the birth, of the cruelty
of Herod the king, and the flight, and the shining of the star, and
the coming of the wise, and the worship of the babe in the manger. He
told of the going to Jerusalem, and of the child amid the doctors, and
the growth in glory; of the meeting with John the Baptist, and the
temptation through Satan, and the many miracles, the changing of water
into wine, the walking on the water, the feeding of the multitude, the
raising of Lazarus from the dead. He told of the danger of the Master,
and the treason of Judas, and the last supper, and the passion in
Gethsemane, and the trial before Pilatus. He told of the crucifixion.
He told of the resurrection.
Argathona sat by the side of the old man in the quiet of the hill-side
and hearkened and wondered, and ever as he spoke she seemed to hear
far off in the woodlands the voices of the old gods complaining. And
the hours waned, and the sacred tale went on, in the solitude of the
forest. Far away to the east a great massacre had taken place in the
Theban plain, and the levies of Baldwin were flying like sheep on the
road to Athens. But no noise of the killing, no echo of the flight came
to trouble the ancient and the maid in their business of telling and
hearing the mystery of the redemption.
When he had made an end, when the lid of the sepulchre had rolled back
and the apparition of the Master had been manifest to the apostles, the
ascetic looked at Argathona and saw that her eyes were pools of tears.
Then she asked him, sadly, if he had been by when this tragedy came to
pass.
"Nay," answered the ancient, "all this happened thirteen hundred
years ago"--but he saw that she did not understand him when he said
this--"and yet, in a sense, I am one of the Lord's apostles. For there
has been a head of the faith ever since from that day to this, and
will be to the end, and the opening of the heavens and the yawning
of the pit. And in the fulness of time it pleased the Lord to uplift
the humble, so that they who had been poor fisherfolk and scriveners,
and the like, became rulers of the Christian world. Wherefore, in my
turn, Heaven made me the greatest prince in the world. Great kings of
great kingdoms, mighty emperors of mighty empires, looked up to me
as to their master, and I spoke to them as a school-master speaks to
his pupils, as a tyrant speaks to his slaves. For when I lived in the
world, who have long left the world, I sat in the seat of St. Peter
in Rome, and I held the keys of heaven and hell, and men called me
by the name of Boniface the Seventh. But it pleased God to punish me
for my arrogance and my pride, and the King of France compassed my
destruction, and his partisans made to slay me, and wellnigh did me to
death, but my servants saved me when I was left for dead and hid me in
a little house. In my sufferings I repented of my sins, and resolved to
expiate them in a life of piety. So I caused it to be blown abroad that
I was dead that I might escape the vengeance of my enemy, even Philip
the Fair, and so live to redeem my soul. Wherefore I journeyed hither,
to the country where Paul preached, and here have I lived these many
years, daily drawing, as I trust, a little nearer to the desired end,
and here when the Lord calls me I look to die. Because I have sinned
and suffered in my past days of wickedness I am sick with pity now for
all who sin and suffer in the world, and if I could I would help you,
my daughter."
Argathona marvelled at his speech and at the strange things he told
her, and though she did not fully understand the import of much that
he said, she understood that he was good and that he meant her well.
Then the old pope asked the pagan maiden what she thought to do when
her lover came to her, and she answered him that she and her lover
would live forever in the greenwood. Then the old pope raised his hand
in warning, and his voice was sad and stern as he told her that this
thing could not be. If her tale were true, and she were indeed one of
the old people permitted by the providence of God to dwell undying upon
earth, such grace was now given to none other in the world, so that
within a little while her lover must needs die and she be left alone.
Now the renewal of this assurance stabbed at Argathona's heart, and she
knelt at the old man's feet and besought him, asking if there were no
way by which her gift of abiding youth and enduring life could be given
to a mortal. Boniface answered her that there was no such way, though
poets had dreamed of a fountain of youth which blessed those that drank
with renewed youth and length of years. But no such fountain existed
in the world. Then Argathona began to weep, remembering her mother's
sorrow, and seeing its renewal for herself, and for the anguish in her
eyes the solitary strove to comfort her.
"I cannot give your lover endless life in this world," he said; "but I
can give you the life of a mortal, with its grace beyond the grave."
When Argathona stared at him wide-eyed in wonder, he told her that if
she would embrace the true faith and be baptized a Christian, in that
moment her birthright of immortality would depart from her and her
gift of endless youth, and she would become a mortal woman with all a
woman's cares and sorrows and a woman's certain death. He told her that
if she did this her beauty would fade from her year by year, and ugly
age would creep upon her, with many aches and pains in its company,
till her time came to pass away. Then he painted the joys of paradise,
and the fellowship of the saints and angels, and the endless pleasure
of the elect. But only by baptism and acceptation of the burden of
death could she hope to be happy with her lover, here for a little
while, and hereafter forever.
Argathona mused a little while nursing her chin in the hollow of her
hand, and after musing rose and thanked the anchorite gravely and
discreetly for what he had told her, and so bade him farewell.
"I will abide for a while in my forest," she said, "and think upon
these things that you have told me, and if it prove that my spirit
shall see with your eyes, and my heart shall speak with your voice,
then I will come to you again."
So she rose and went her way up the mountain path into the forest, and
the old pope knelt at the feet of the Crucified and prayed.
XXVII
THE DREAM OF ARGATHONA
When Argathona left the ancient and pursued her homeward path, the
fervor of the day was on the wane, and the sky flamed as with the
conflagration of a hero's funeral pyre. The west was a medley of reds
and yellows, peach color, gold color, rose color, copper color, orange
color. All the splendid metals fused in that limbec; all the luxurious
fruits and flowers wantoned in that garden. The sun had fallen behind
the dark clouds that girdled the horizon; he had vanished as a king
might vanish through dark, swiftly falling curtains, but his glittering
retinue still lingered in the Occidental antechamber, brilliant in
the liveries of their imperious king. High in heaven the moon swam in
a space of unnamable, unthinkable sweetness; it was no more than a
half moon, and showed like a shield held sideways when a knight rides
down the lists. Far away the sea slumbered, steel-blue like a knight's
sword, and its large, noiseless waves suggested the easy breathing of
some fearful force asleep, and sleeping, lovely in its peace.
Argathona paused on the crest of a ridge and gazed in adoration at
the majesty of the dusk. It seemed to her as if she could never weary
of looking on such loveliness, and her heart grew cold at the new turn
of her thoughts. Must she, indeed, set a term to her delight in life,
to the joy of the dawn and the noon and the even and the night, joys
renewable to her for ever and ever? She could not understand what
it meant to say farewell to the sunlight and the moonlight and the
stars, to be no longer a child of the bright earth, to fade away as
her mother's essence had faded away, to live and love, and then, in a
breath, to live and love no more. Faces of fear seemed to gibber at her
through the tree-trunks, the hands of anguish seemed to clasp at her
throat as if to strangle her; for the first time she felt and trembled
at the horror of the forest. With a cry of pain she turned from the
sunset and plunged into the wood, and made for her resting-place in the
heart of the groves. There she flung herself upon the turf, and above
her the sky was gray with stars, and, sobbing, she sought and found
sleep.
So Argathona lay asleep in the greenwood, and for a wonder Argathona
dreamed a dream. She knew in her sleep that she was in the spot where
she lay, in that hollow place in the heart of the old forest where
always, since her babyhood, she had loved best to linger. Here in the
summer days it was sweet to lie awake and see the sunbeams dapple the
grass with shadows, or to be lulled to slumber by the droning of the
bees. Here in the summer nights it was sweet to lie awake and peep
through the branches at the stars, or to be guided by the silence into
the region of sleep. But now, in this unwonted dream of hers, she
thought that all the winds of all the world were blowing softly through
the lanes and alleys and avenues of the wood, and she believed that
she, sleeping, stirred in her sleep to hear, and as she hearkened,
it was as if the wailings of the winds grew stronger, till they took
the tone of many differing sounds, as the beating of the wings of
monstrous birds, and the galloping of huge horses, and the straining
of great sails at sea. And as she, in her vision, lay and listened to
the cunning of the wind, she was made aware that the place where she
rested shone with a marvel of faces that she had not seen since she was
a dryad child, and she felt that her wood was peopled once again with
the presences of the gods of Greece.
She saw them all about her, between the trees and upon the grass,
moving upon her like a circle of flakes of white fire, and at first
the phantasms seemed to flicker as flame does, inclining this way and
that, waxing and waning, but ever coming closer. Suddenly they stood
very still, and it was as if she saw clearer and the flamy shapes took
substance, and she knew that she was surrounded by the company of the
Olympians, and that they showed as she had seen them long ago in her
babyhood ere they rode to the hollow land.
Now while Argathona gazed in awe at the celestials, it appeared to her
in her vision that behind these mightiest there congregated a throng
of forms filling all the spaces of the wood as far as she could see,
and she knew these to be the fellowship of the ancient faith. There
clustered the lesser gods, the domestic gods, and the sylvan gods,
the divinities of winds and clouds and waters, the beautiful sisters
of the dooms and the seasons, and the charities and the arts, and the
grim deities of the underworld, and the uncouth creatures that dwelled
beyond the realm of night, and the demi-gods, that were men and were
uplifted. Argathona beheld them all in a single glance, for all their
number, each one individual and familiar, as if no other godlike
thing waited there and watched in the moonlight, and yet they blended
together even as the moonbeams blended. And now she thought as she lay
there, sleeping yet waking, that the eyes of all the Olympians, and the
eyes of the myriads beyond, were fixed upon her with a look of entreaty
and a look of grief. And the ears of her sleep were quickened, and she
heard the eternals speak to her one after one.
The first to speak was Zeus, the all-father, launcher of the levin.
His hair was wreathed with a chaplet of oak-leaves, and his right hand
grasped a staff upon whose head an eagle perched that fluttered its
wings as if about to fly and stared around with fierce, unblinking
eyes. And Zeus, the commander of the clouds and the tyrant of the
thunder, spoke to Argathona, and said:
"Deathless daughter of a divine mother, do not desert your mother's
people and your birthright, the gift of your kin. For though we no
longer abide in Greece, you remain, and we may yet return. Wherefore be
faithful to the old faith of the fruitful earth and await the coming of
your kindred."
So Zeus, the all-father, spoke, and his face was compassionate and sad,
and the eagle craned its head towards the sleeping girl and clapped its
angry wings. The next to speak was Hera, consort of the monarch of the
gods. She wore a queenly crown, and on the ball of her sceptre a cuckoo
sat and preened its yellow plumes. And Hera spoke to Argathona, and
said:
"Daughter of the consecrated forest, do not abandon its sanctuary at
the call of a mortal for a mortal's god. That which has gone may come
again, and if the time of our triumph arrive we should weep, indeed,
were Argathona not here to welcome us."
And so she made silence, and the restless cuckoo cried its cry while
the wife of the high-minded drew her veil about her face. And the next
to speak was Poseidon, the sovereign of the sea, and Poseidon leaned
upon his trident, and his voice was as the lapping of waves in a sunny
bay.
"These plead for the fruitful earth. I plead for the fruitless
sea. Fair as a maiden in its grace, fierce as a mænad in its rage.
Unchanging, ever-changing, pitiful and pitiless, kind and cruel,
ceaselessly beautiful. Surely you will not surrender companionship
with the sight and the sound and the savor of the sea."
So Poseidon spoke, arrogant, and was silent, and it seemed to the
sleeper that from afar, from the side of the sea, there rose unearthly
music as from the breath of the sea-people blown through the curling
conch. And the next to speak was the divine one with the crested head,
she that carries a lance and bears the face of Medusa on her shield,
Pallas Athena, protector of Athens. A wise owl rode on her shoulder
and made as if it whispered in her ear. And Pallas Athena spoke to
Argathona, and said:
"It is better to be wise in the wisdom of the woodlands than wise in
the wisdom of mortals, for mortal man is born to trouble, and mortal
woman is born to travail, and the life of each is like the puff of
breath that an infant spends in a cry. The child of the wildwood lives
idly, divinely, knowing neither cark nor care, and day succeeds day,
delicious, and shall succeed till the new order changes and the gods
return again."
And so she was silent, and the owl on her shoulder ruffled its
neck-feathers and winked its eyes benignly at the sleeping child. And
the next to speak was Hermes, the subtle contriver, the crafty, with
the living wings upon his heels and the twisting snakes upon his staff,
and he spoke to Argathona, and his voice entreated wheedlingly, and it
had the persuasion of music rippling from the stringed shell of the
tortoise. And Hermes spoke to her, and said:
"My kinswoman, put no faith in the words of man, for the lips that
praised us yesterday praise another lord to-day, and who knows what
such fluctuant minds may praise to-morrow. Mortal man is guileful and
his speech is a snare, but thou, being warned, be wily and deny him and
let him die."
So he spoke and was silent, and the wings on his heels ceased to quiver
and the snakes stiffened about his rod. Then the girl-goddess Artemis
glided over the grass, short-kirtled, the comely huntress, with her bow
and arrows upon her, and some stray locks of her pale hair floating on
her neck. And Artemis spoke to Argathona as she slept, and said:
"Sweet sister, living the life I loved to live in the dear woodways
with the citizens of the wood, take heed to my speech and be cheered.
Shun the love of mortal, for your lover will die as Endymion died, and
you will remember him for a while and weep, as I remembered and wept
for Endymion. But time can sweeten the grief that wrings for a season
the deathless heart, wherefore be wise with time betimes, and abide our
coming though it be long delayed; for while you wait you have endless
pleasure in the changing days and the shifting seasons and the swelling
years, in the sunshine and the moonshine and the shining of the stars."
So she spoke and was silent, and the night wind fluttered the fair
curls upon her nape and the silver gray folds about her knees. Then the
effulgent, the sun-god, moved from his fellows, Phœbus Apollo, with his
lyre cradled in his left arm, and his right hand touched the strings,
and what he spoke he seemed to sing, and his song was as the song of
the wandering stars in heaven. And he spoke to Argathona, and said:
"Daughter of the gods, the gods forbid your unfaith. To be of us once
is to be of us forever, and, though we linger in the hollow land, we
are still the celestials, and still we desire the remembrance and
the fidelity of our kin. It is nobler to hold to our memory than to
surrender us for a mortal and a mortal's melancholy god. Wait in the
greenwood, watch with the ancient faith, patient in the knowledge of
endless youth."
So he was silent, and the sunlight of his words seemed to race all
over her body and thread her veins with fire. And thereafter it seemed
to Argathona, in her slumber, that god spoke after god innumerable,
beautiful gods and grotesque gods in their attributes of benignant or
terrible divinity, each appealing to her, or commanding her to stay
with the ancient faith, and to shut her heart against the sons of men
and the Son of Man. Their voices were eloquent as the rustling of
leaves in the forest or the crisping of waves on the shore, so that
she could have been content to rest there and to listen to them in
gladness through the revolving years.
When it seemed to her that all had spoken, came from that fair company
the fairest of them all, Aphrodite, the incomparable, lovelier than
all women, loveliest of all goddesses, with her gray doves fluttering
about her naked body, and as she moved across the grass red roses
burgeoned at her feet. Aphrodite came very nigh to the sleeping dryad,
and her eyes were shining with the passion and compassion of love, and
her voice was wooing and winning with a music unheard out of dreams.
Aphrodite spoke, and said:
"Argathona, I pity you, and I know not what to say, for I, like you,
have known what it is to love a mortal, and in very truth I think
it were better to love a mortal than never to know the meaning of
love. Love, then, this mortal and let him die divinely, having kissed
immortal lips and clasped immortal beauty. And when he is but as the
dust of yesterday, there will still be comely mortals to love, and you
can quench your passing hours of sorrow with golden years of joy. But
do not forsake the old faith for the new god, for he that is by my side
is still the greatest god in the world, and ever the master of mortal
men."
As she spoke, Aphrodite moved a little ways and gave place, and
Argathona saw the form and face of a beautiful, silent youth, and his
countenance was grave and glorious, and Argathona beheld undazzled the
splendor of the godhead of Eros. Eros spoke no word, but he lifted up
his hands as if at once in blessing and command, and at that look and
sign Argathona's heart seemed to melt within her and to need no other
entreaties. But even then there loomed a mighty figure from the forest,
making his way through the shining ranks of the divine, a shaggy,
puck-nosed giant, with little horns sprouting from his forehead through
his tangle of savage curls, and though he was made like a man-god he
ran on goat shanks, and he held in his hand a strange pipe, framed of
many pieces of reed of different measure bound together by withies.
In his presence the other gods appeared to fade and show faint, and
the power of the new-comer seemed to inform all the forest and to
overshadow all the world.
Pan spoke no word as he fixed his fierce, friendly eyes upon Argathona,
but he set his thick lips to the rims of his reeds and blew down them,
and his breath made such melody in their channels as Argathona ached
with fear and longing to hear, and all the other gods stood spellbound.
The piper piped of the red earth and the green grass and the blue sky
and the yellow corn, of the straight passions and the simple pleasures
of men, of love and pursuit and triumph, of hunger with meat a-nigh,
of thirst with the wine-skin between the fingers, of sleep and waking,
of jollity and horror, the mirth and the fear of things. He piped of
the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, the humming of bees
and the buzzing of flies, the flowing of streams and the growing of
flowers, the singing of shepherds and the dancing of the nymphs upon
the green. He piped till his piping came to a burden, and the burden of
his piping seemed to be, "Keep the Faith."
Then all the Olympians cried out in chorus: "Wait, watch, keep the
faith." And behind the circle of the greater gods all that populous
multitude of the lesser gods took up the call and voiced it, ringing
through the forest and filling the sky, and stretching to the ends of
the world: "Watch, wait, keep the faith."
And with that cry there arose again the sound of the beating of wings
and the trampling of horses and the straining of sails and the wailing
of great winds, and then in a breath the Olympians vanished, the vision
faded, and Argathona awoke in the strong morning sunshine to find her
lover looking down upon her.
XXVIII
LOVER AND LASS
When Simon carried Rainouart senseless out of the slough where his
comrades perished, he made as hard as his horse could fare on the way
to the Eleusinian wood. While the flying forces of the dead duke kept
on the main way to Athens, he sought to strike a trail that would
lead him more directly to his goal, and, ignorant though he was of
the country in which he found himself, the native sense of a war-worn
campaigner, acting like a kind of instinct, guided him aright. But
the business was slow, first from the unfamiliarity of the region and
next from the fact that the good horse could go at no continuance of a
steady pace with two heavy men upon his back. Indeed, when they came
to the mountainous places, there was much picking of the way and no
little stumbling and sliding in the act. So that it happened that the
May daylight was fairly spent before Simon felt confident that he was
well within the precincts of the Eleusinian wood, and that the purpose
of his journey was so far accomplished.
He had been too much occupied for thought of other matter than escape
from danger up to this moment, but now, when so many leagues lay behind
him and the bloody swamp, now, when what pursuit must have been was
afoot in quite another direction on the heels of the Athenian army,
Simon decided that the time had come to rest awhile and to consider
the case of the young prince, who still lay inanimate before him.
Reining his steed, he dismounted. Then, still holding the bridle of the
horse, he lifted Rainouart from the saddle and carried him with little
difficulty to a shady place a little way removed from the narrow track
they had for some time been following. Here Simon laid the unconscious
youth on his back beneath a tree, and tethered the horse to another at
a little distance.