hedge as though some enchantment had fallen upon him. But she was out of
the saddle by the time he reached the gate, and, by the way she carried
herself, more than fit to deal with her own affairs.
“That is the stable, there by the woodstack?”
“Yes.”
“Is the door locked? No? I thank you, good father.”
He loitered about there like a great boy, feeling that he ought to help
her, but that she did not desire his help. She seemed to have a way of
taking possession of things. He could see her removing the saddle and
bridle from her horse, and presently she was at the haystack gathering
up some of the loose hay in her arms. She had left her brown cloak in
the stable, and her blue spencer and green gown made Martin think of
some rich blue flower on a green stalk.
Next he saw her handling a bucket, and this time the spirit moved him.
He went across to her with boyish gravity.
“The spring is down the hill. I will fetch the water.”
She gave him the bucket with an air of unconcern. Her hand touched his,
and thrilled him to the shoulder, but she did not so much as notice that
she had touched him.
“Thank you, Father——”
“Martin.”
“Martin.”
“It would be too heavy for you to carry,” he said bluntly.
But she turned back into the stable as though she had not heard him.
Martin Valliant went down to the spring with a most strange sense of
self-dissatisfaction. He filled the bucket, balanced it on the rough
stones that formed a wall around the spring, and stared at his own
reflection in the water. The thought struck him that he had never looked
at himself in that same way before, critically, with a personal
inquisitiveness. A new self-consciousness was being born in him. He
stood there brooding, wondering if other men——
Then he rebuked himself with fierce severity, and carried the bucket
back up the hill. Mellis was not in the stable, so he watered the horse
and stared at the saddle and bridle hanging on the wall as though they
could tell him who she was and whence she came. It occurred to him that
she might be hungry, and at the same time he remembered that the food in
his larder was hardly fit for a sturdy beggar.
This struck him as an absolute disaster. He went guiltily to his cell,
and took out what by courtesy he called bread. It was of his own baking,
a detestable piece of alchemy.
He weighed it in his hand, and found himself thinking of the lithe way
in which she moved.
“They bake good bread at Paradise,” he said to himself.
A quite ridiculous anger attacked him.
“Mean hounds! This chapelry should be better served. A couple of mules
with panniers——”
He went forth, stroking his chin dubiously, and looking at the bread he
carried.
“Poor stuff for such a pilgrim.”
The door of the little rest-house stood open, showing its oak table and
benches, and the rude wooden pallets that served as beds. Mellis was
standing behind the table, unpacking one of her saddle-bags.
“This bread——”
He felt his face growing hot. Her eyes regarded him with momentary
amusement.
“Is that—bread?”
“It is as God made me make it.”
She was smiling. His quaint humility touched her.
“I will take your bread, Father Martin, and in exchange you shall eat
some of mine.”
She took out a manchet wrapped in white butter cloth and held it out to
him.
“Put your bread upon the table. I dare vow it cost you much
honest—labor.”
She had nearly said “cursing,” but his solemn face chastened her.
Martin Valliant took her manchet, handling it as though it were
something that would break. His eyes wandered around the room and
noticed the wooden pallets.
“There should be some sweet hay spread there,” he said to himself.
Mellis was watching him, but with no great interest. For the moment life
called to her as a fierce and impetuous adventure. She had no use for a
man who wore the dress of a priest.
“I will keep this bread for the altar,” he said suddenly, feeling that
he had no excuse for loitering any longer in the room.
For an hour or more Martin Valliant went about his work with grim
thoroughness. He fetched more water from the spring, cut up wood for
kindling, swept out the chapel and his cell, and looked into the press
where he kept his vestments to see that the moths had not been at work.
Yet all the while he had his mind’s eye on the door of the rest-house;
his thoughts wandered, no matter how busy he kept his hands.
He was standing at the doorway of the chapel, polishing one of the
silver candlesticks that stood on the altar, when Mellis came out of the
rest-house and turned her steps toward the great wooden cross. She
passed close to the chapel in wandering toward the highest point of the
moor, and her eyes rested for a moment on Martin Valliant and his silver
candlestick.
It may have been that she asked herself what this tall fellow meant by
living the life of an old woman when he was built for the trade of the
sword. At all events, Martin Valliant saw a look in her eyes that was
very like pity touched with scorn.
He watched her go to the cross and sit down on the mound. Her chin was
raised, and she turned her head slowly from side to side, as though to
bring all the Forest under her ken. There was something finely
adventurous about her pose. She made Martin think of a wild-eyed bird
surveying the world before spreading her wings for a flight.
He conceived a sudden distaste for polishing such a thing as a
candlestick. He studied his own hands; they were big and brown, and he
knew how strong they were. He remembered how he had straightened an iron
crowbar across his knee, to the delight of the prior’s woodcutters. And
when the big wain had got bogged by Lady’s Brook, Martin Valliant had
crawled under the axle beam and lifted it out.
The candlestick was returned to the altar, and Martin went down to the
haystack to fetch hay for Mellis’s bed. The hay knife was in the stack,
and he cut out a good truss of fresh stuff and carried it to the
rest-house. He had spread it on one of the wooden beds and was crossing
the threshold, when he met Mellis face to face.
“I have brought some hay for a bed.”
He colored like fire, but her voice was casual when she answered him.
“You vex yourself too much on my account, father. Last night I slept out
under a tree.”
Martin spent an hour walking up and down behind the chapel, raging with
sudden self-humiliation. Why did she treat him as though he were an old
man or a child?
_Chapter XII_
The next day came and went, a pageant of white clouds in a deep blue
sky, and the earth all green to the purple of the distant hills.
Martin Valliant began the morning with a queer flush of excitement, even
of trepidation. The woman with the dark hair and the wild woodland eyes
would mount her horse and ride away out of his life. And somehow he did
not want her to go, nor was he ashamed of the desire. He found himself
in awe of her, but he did not fear her as he had feared poor Kate
Succory. She was a mystery, a vision, a strange new world that made him
stand wide-eyed with wonder. Her lips made him think of the holy wine,
pure drink, red as blood, and undefiled.
His restlessness began with the dawn. He rang the chapel bell, went
through the services, with his thoughts wandering out and waiting
expectantly outside the rest-house door. For the very first time the
spirit of dissimulation entered Brother Martin’s life, prompting him to
walk up and down the grassy space outside his cell, hands folded, head
bent, as though in meditation.
He saw her door open. She came out, her black hair hanging loose, wished
him a calm “good morning,” and went down toward the spring. She had gone
to wash herself there, to dabble her hands in the water. Martin paced up
and down.
She returned, disappeared into the rest-house, and there was
silence—suspense. Martin Valliant kept passing the open doorway, but he
had not the courage to look in.
“Father Martin——”
He faced around with a guileless air, as though she had been very
distant from his thoughts.
“Did you speak to me, Mistress——”
“And I have not told you my name! I am called Catharine Lovel. I wish to
tarry here for some days, if St. Florence does not forbid it.”
Martin looked grave.
“I never heard that St. Florence had set a boundary to his charity,” he
said.
“Then I am the more his debtor in the spirit. This is so sweet and calm
a place. I come from a forest country, Father Martin.”
“It is a very wonderful country,” he agreed.
“And should be pleasant to one who has been vowed to a month’s silence?”
Again Martin agreed with her. She stood at gaze, her hands clasped in
front of her.
“One cannot lose oneself with this moor as a guide post. I shall ride
out, Father Martin, and go down into the woods.”
“In the valley there the beech trees are very noble,” he said; “I love
them.”
“Sometimes, Father Martin, trees are nobler than men.”
He pondered those words of hers all day.
Dusk was falling before she returned. The brown horse’s ears hung limp,
as though she had ridden him many miles, and his coat was stained with
sweat. Martin Valliant had been standing in the doorway of his cell. He
went forward to hold her horse.
“I so managed it that I lost myself,” she said.
Her face looked white in the dusk, and her eyes tired.
“I reached a river, a fine stream.”
“The Rondel. It runs a league away, and the woods are great and very
thick.”
“That lured me on—perhaps. I found a ford, and pushed my horse over,
there are wild grasslands beyond all full of flowers.”
“I have never been so far,” he confessed.
“It is a great country, even wilder than my own. I saw as splendid a
hart as ever swam a stream come down and cross the river. And now I am
as hungry as though I had followed the hounds.”
He saw that she was weary.
“I will look to the horse.”
She glided down from the saddle.
“The poor beast has had to suffer for my whims, father. He will bless
you, no doubt. And so good-night to you; I shall be asleep almost before
I have supped.”
Martin Valliant led the horse to the stable, took off the saddle and
bridle, and rubbed the beast down with a handful of hay. He found the
animal muddied above the knees, and there were other matters to set
Martin thinking. The fords of the Roding were floored with sand, for the
Roding was a clean river and ran at a good pace. Of course, the mud
might have come from some piece of bog or a forest stream. He was the
more astonished that she should have reached the river, and having
reached it, found her way back again through one of the wildest and most
savage parts of the Forest. The ways were few and treacherous, and known
only to the forest folk, and yet what reason was there for her to lie?
The second day resembled the first in its happenings, save that Martin
Valliant betrayed a more flagrant interest in this mysterious woman’s
pilgrimage. She rode out early, and he hid himself behind a thorn bush
on the moor and watched her progress. She chose neither the path that
led to the beech woods, nor the road going west, but turned aside along
the track that made for Oakshot Bottom. Martin watched her till she was
out of sight, hidden by the belt of birches that bounded the northern
rim of the moor.
She returned earlier that day, and in a strange and sullen temper. She
let Martin take the horse, but her eyes avoided his, and she had little
to say to him.
“I struck a fool’s country—all sand.”
“That would be the White Plain.”
“‘White’ they call it! A good jest!”
“Because of the birch trees.”
“Ah, the birch trees! I remember.”
He looked at her curiously, but she went straight to the rest-house and
shut herself in. Something seemed to have gone very amiss with her that
day, and Martin was honestly perplexed. Were women made of such wayward
stuff that some dust, a wood of birch trees, and perhaps a few flies,
could stir such spirited discontent?
He took her horse to the stable, fed and groomed him as though he were
my lady’s servant. And again he examined the beast’s feet, only to
discover something that was singular. One of the hind hoofs had red clay
balled in it, and Martin Valliant knew that red clay was not to be found
in that part of the Forest.
He picked the stuff out and stared at it, holding it in one palm.
“Oakshot is yellow, Bracknell is black,
Troy is as white as a miller’s sack,
The Paradise fields are as brown as wood,
But red is the color of Bloody Rood.”
He called to mind the old Forest jingle, and the reddish-yellow lump in
his hand rhymed with it.
“Bloody Rood? That is the Blount’s lordship. Young Nigel holds the fee.”
He frowned and tossed the clay into the stall.
Martin saw no more of Mellis that evening; she remained shut up in the
rest-house, nor did he leave the limits of his cell. A new emotion had
been born in Martin Valliant’s heart—an emotion that was so utterly
human that the saint was fast losing himself in the man. Mellis was
growing more mysterious, more elusive, and Martin Valliant’s imagination
had carried him away at a gallop in pursuit of her.
Why had she ridden all the way to Bloody Rood? Chance could not have
carried her there, and what reason had she for hiding the truth? The
adventure had not gone smoothly, to judge by the temper of her return.
And what sort of adventure could befall a woman in the Forest?
From the moment of that thought an utterly new look came into Martin
Valliant’s eyes. His nostrils dilated, he stared fixedly at some
imaginary scene, his hands clenched themselves. Dame Nature had flicked
him with her scourge of jealousy, set him thinking about a certain young
Nigel Blount of Bloody Rood.
Martin Valliant discovered his own manhood that night. He had ceased to
be an onlooker, a creature in petticoats, an impersonal, passionless
saint. He was going to take a part in the adventure: to see for himself
how life stood.
_Chapter XIII_
Mellis had little to say to him next morning when he carried her a
bucket of water from the spring. She was standing in the doorway of the
rest-house, a far-away look in her eyes, her black hair caught up by a
piece of red ribbon and tied behind her shoulders.
Martin did not dare to question her as to what she purposed for the day.
His own secret was too big for him, and he felt guilty toward her in his
thoughts. He went back to his cell, filled a wallet with food, and laid
it ready behind the door with a stout hollywood staff that had belonged
to Father Jude. If the girl rode out that morning he had made up his
mind to follow her and leave the chapelry to take care of itself.
Going out to reconnoiter, he saw Mellis in the stable saddling her
horse. The hint was sufficient. He kept out of the way and bided his
time.
She did not call to him that morning or offer him any explanation, but
rode straight from the stable past the great cross and over the edge of
the moor. Martin saw her go. He slung the wallet over his shoulder, took
his staff, and followed, stopping at the rest-house door to see whether
she had left her saddle-bags behind. They were lying on one of the
wooden beds, so that he knew that she purposed to return.
As a boy, Martin Valliant had tracked the deer, and his following of
Mellis was just as subtle a piece of hunting. The old brown horse was
jaded and stale, but she pushed him to a trot down the slope of the
moor, and Martin had to run to keep her well in view. Luckily she was
too busy keeping a watch for rabbit holes to trouble about looking back.
When she reached the place where the track branched she reined in, and
Martin dropped down behind a furze bush. Her indecision lasted only for
a few seconds, for when he raised his head cautiously to get sight of
her she was already moving along the track that made for the Green
Deeps. Martin’s nostrils quivered, and his eyes lost some of their
hardness. She had not chosen the track to Oakshot Bottom; Bloody Rood
and the Blounts were out of court.
The brown horse appeared to be setting his own pace, and she had to
humor him because of his age. A fair stride enabled Martin to keep his
distance. He had to follow very cautiously over the moor, watching her
like a hound, and ready to drop to earth should she waver or look back.
There was a moment when he thought that he had betrayed himself, for she
reined in her horse and sat looking steadily back at the swell of the
moor. Martin lay flat in the heather, and presently she rode on.
The Green Deeps opened before them, wild valleys choked with woodland,
almost pathless, a region where outlaws sometimes hid themselves. A
narrow ride almost choked with scrub and brambles followed the valleys,
lifting itself now and again over the shoulder of a low hill. The woods
towered against the blue, solemn and silent. Sometimes a stream broke
the stillness with a thin, trickling murmur.
They were heading for the Rondel; Martin knew that much, though this
wild country was all virgin to him. He had to keep in closer touch with
her, for the track disappeared at times, and Mellis threaded her way
among the oaks and beeches. He was astonished at the steady,
unhesitating way she rode, choosing her path when the track branched,
without any sign of faltering. The Deeps were a great green fog to
Martin Valliant; he was utterly lost in them, save for the guesswork
that they were traveling north. All his wits were centered on the girl,
on keeping her in view, and pushing ahead quickly when he lost her
behind some leafy screen, on saving himself from rushing into a
betrayal.
The track climbed a hill, and then the ground fell steeply, almost like
a green cliff. Martin saw the gleam of water shining below the crowded
domes of the trees. It was the Rondel flashing in the sunlight between
the green walls of the Forest.
Mellis was urging the brown horse into the water when Martin reached the
underwood at the top of the bank. She had struck the ford, and he saw
that the water was quite shallow, reaching just above the horse’s knees.
He dared not break cover until she was across, and there was every
chance of his losing her if he fell too far behind, but she rode her
horse straight out of the water and on into the Forest without glancing
back. Martin tucked up his frock and splashed his way across like Atlas
plowing through the ocean, scrambled up the far bank, and caught sight
of her at the end of a colonnade of beeches, a green tunnel floored with
brown leaves and bluebells. He started running, keeping close to the
trunks of the trees, ready to dodge behind one of them if she so much as
turned her head.
Martin’s chase of her lasted another hour, and the farther she led him
the more mysterious she became. He was utterly perplexed by the whole
business, and astonished by her miraculous knowledge of the Forest ways.
He became aware of a change in the green wilderness; the woods were more
open, the glades more frequent, and stretches of grassland flowed here
and there, all yellow with buttercups and shining like cloth of gold. It
was a more spacious country, more beautiful, less savage, lush, deep,
and mysterious, sheltered from the winds. There were yews and hollies
here more ancient than he had ever seen. Great sweeps of young bracken
covered the open slopes of the hills.
They climbed a long rise where old beech trees grew. Its solemn aisles
opened westwards on a little secret valley. Water glimmered in the green
lap of the valley, and for a moment Martin thought that he had struck
one of the reaches of the river. But something that happened ahead of
him brought Martin Valliant to earth, with his chin resting on the mossy
root of a beech tree. Mellis had dismounted, and was tying her horse to
a drooping bough. They had come to the end of their journey.
He saw her go forward under the shade of the great trees. There was
caution in her movements. She kept well in the shadows, gliding from
trunk to trunk, not hurrying, as though she wished to make sure that no
human thing moved in the valley below her. Presently she seemed
satisfied. Martin saw her walk out boldly into the open and pass out of
sight below the slope of the hill.
Not till he had crawled to the edge of the beech wood did Martin
Valliant realize what the valley held. A broad mere lay in a grassy
hollow, shaded toward the north by willows, and ringed about with yellow
flags and water herbs. An island seemed to float upon the water, all
white with old fruit trees in bloom. A gray turret and the bare stone
gable-ends of a house showed above the apple blossom. There was a little
gate-house close to the water, but its roof was gone, and the bridge
that had led to it ruinous. The charred rafters of a barn showed beyond
the sweep of an ivy-covered wall. Martin could trace the suggestions of
a garden, with old yew trees, hornbeam hedges all gone to top, and a
broad terrace walk that looked as though it were paved with stone. The
place had a still, sweet, tragic look, lying there in the deeps of the
Forest, its fruit trees white with blossom, although no one had pruned
them, and the fruit they bore would rot in the grass or be eaten by the
birds.
Martin Valliant was so astonished by what he saw, so bewitched by the
desolate beauty of the place, that he had almost forgotten Mellis. She
had reached the edge of the water and was standing by a willow, looking
across at the ruined house. A sudden awe seemed to steal into Martin’s
eyes. Mystery! And she was the human part of it, wandering by Forest
ways to this island of beautiful desolation. No chance quest had brought
her to the place, and Martin, lying there with his chin on his hands,
felt a strange stirring in his heart. Perhaps she had lied to him—but
what then? The very thought of it quickened his compassion. In following
her he had stumbled upon the real woman—a woman whose eyes were deep
with unforgettable things.
The truth came to him like the opening of a book. Tags of gossip tossed
to and fro across the refectory table at Paradise pieced themselves
together. Woodmere, the Dales’ house, sacked and burned by Roger Bland
of Troy Castle; old Dale with a spear through his body lying dead under
an oak tree. Blood shed for the love of a red rose. Two children saved
by a swineherd and shipped off in a fishing-boat from Gawdy Town.
Woodmere rotting in the Forest, to please the Lord of Troy’s sneering
and whimsical pride!
Mellis had wandered along to what had been the bridge. Two spans of it
still stood, but the center arch had been thrown down, leaving a gap of
twelve feet or more. Young trees had taken possession of the broken
walls, and the bridge-head was choked with brambles. There was no way of
crossing the gap save by thrusting a big beam or the trunk of a tree
across it, and such a piece of bridge mending was wholly beyond a
woman’s strength. Moreover, there was a second chasm to be crossed where
the drawbridge had been worked from the gate-house, but the drawbridge
was a thing of the past. Roger Bland had had it unchained and unbolted
and dragged to Troy Castle as a trophy.
Martin Valliant saw her walk along the broken bridge and stand there
baffled, and though there was the one obvious and most natural way of
crossing the water, it never entered Martin’s head that she would choose
it. She came back to the landward side, and he lost sight of her in a
little hollow beside the bridge-head that was hidden by bushes and young
trees. He was still wondering what she would do, and whether he had the
courage to go down and confess himself and help her, when he saw her
rise out of the green foam of the foliage like Venus rising out of the
sea.
She had thrown off her clothes, and went as Mother Nature had made her,
a beautiful white creature crowned by her dark hair. In looking at her
Martin forgot that he was a man, forgot his vows, forgot that there was
such a thing as sin. For there seemed no shame in her beauty, and in
that white shape of hers kissed by the sun.
Beyond the bridge a little grassy headland jutted into the mere where
the water was clear of weeds. Mellis made her way toward it, like Eve
walking the earth before sin was born. She stepped down into the water,
waded a pace or two, and then glided forward on her bosom, the water
rippling over her shoulders. Thirty breast strokes earned her across.
She climbed out at what had been an old mooring stage for the big
flat-bottomed boat that had been used for fishing. For a moment Martin
saw her stand white and straight in the sunlight; then her hands went up
and her black hair came clouding down. It enveloped her like a cloak,
hanging to the level of her knees, like night shrouding the day. She
seemed to have no thought of being watched or spied upon; the place was
a wilderness; she went as Nature made her.