He heard her voice, at first very soft and faint, like a voice from a
distance. He had not looked at her since he had struck Vance down.
Slowly he seemed to drag himself from staring at his own handiwork. He
turned his head, and her eyes met his.
Once more the soul of that tragic day astonished him, for there was a
strange, shining light in Mellis’s eyes. Her lips seemed to tremble; her
throat showed proud and triumphant. Here was no shame, no horror, but a
something that gloried, an exultation that was near to tears.
He stared at her as though he had been dead and she had called him back
to life.
Mellis stretched out her hands as though to crown him.
“Martin Valliant—Martin Valliant.”
Again the note of exultation sounded. He beheld a new and human glory in
her eyes.
“God forgive me.”
He dropped on his knees, and covered his face with his right arm.
The woman in her rushed instantly to comfort him.
“Martin—Martin Valliant, take it not to heart. God slays men sometimes;
it is right and good that they should be slain.”
She bent over him with infinite compassion.
“How can I lift this burden from you, you who have striven to love men?”
He dropped his arm and stared at the grass.
“What has happened to me? I do not understand. Yet that man there was an
evil beast, and I struck him in clean wrath. What does God wish? I have
lost the light in my soul.”
He got up and began to walk to and fro with great strides, his forehead
all knotted, his mouth awry. And Mellis watched him, keeping silent, but
with a great pity in her eyes. He was like a blind man, groping his way,
lost in the confusion of his own soul.
“Martin——”
He turned to her with dull anguish in his eyes.
“God will not speak to me. I hear no voice but yours. I will go and
surrender myself.”
“To whom?”
“What does it matter? There is blood on my hands. Let them do with me as
they please.”
A new light flashed in her eyes. She seemed to feel the struggle that
was coming, the fight for the soul of this strong man. Either he would
dash himself to ruin, or she would save him as he had saved her.
“Is there no other voice but mine?”
“None.”
“Perhaps God is in my voice, speaking to you, Martin Valliant.”
He looked at her strangely.
“Those men died by my hand.”
“Good—very good—I grant it. There’s death, lying at our feet. Let us
look at it boldly, without shrinking, without shame. What were those
men? One was an evil beast, you say, and I know it to be true. He was
one of those who slew my father; I would charge him, too, with my
brother’s death, and by your hand I am avenged. There were three, and
you were alone. There was God’s good wrath in your heart. And I call you
proudly Martin Valliant. Yes, the song of the sword is yours.”
The blood rose to his face.
“Is my sin the less?”
“What if there be no sin in the killing of such enemies? Think, why did
you strike the man down?”
He avoided her eyes.
“To save me. Because your heart told you that these men brought me
death—perhaps things that are worse than death. You killed them, but I
live and am free.”
She smiled bravely.
“Free—to be grateful—free to swear to you from my heart that the deed
was done nobly. And now—what of the morrow?”
He could not rise to her rebel mood as yet; the old life still hung to
him, though he realized that it was a thing of rags and tatters.
“To-morrow? I cannot think of a to-morrow. Life seems to end for me in a
great cliff.”
She made herself look at the dead man, pointed at him with her finger.
“You know whom you have killed?”
“Vance, the Forest Warden.”
“Roger Bland’s watchdog. And you will hang for it, Martin Valliant, in
spite of twenty St. Benedicts. The Lord of Troy is not gentle with those
who flout him.”
He answered sullenly, “If I hang—I hang.”
Mellis went closer, and looked steadily into his face.
“And I, Martin Valliant, I shall hang on the same gibbet.”
He threw his head back, with a tightening of the mouth and a hardening
of the eyes.
“God forbid!”
“Roger Bland of Troy will not forbid it. We shall hang, Martin Valliant,
unless——”
He opened and shut his hands as though blindly striving to grip the
truth.
“I am a broken man—but you——”
“Broken, say you? And before God—why? What are we but rebels, outlaws,
so long as Crookback rules and such hounds as Bland hunt at his bidding?
My troth is pledged to another king. Broken?—never! What, shall I not
fight for my life against my enemies—aye, and with a good heart? And
you, Martin Valliant?”
“I—fight—to save myself?”
“Would you let them lead you off like an ox to be pole-axed?”
“I have vowed——”
“God have pity on you, Martin Valliant. Where are your vows now? Blown
to the winds. No, I’ll not suffer you to go with meek madness to your
death. Answer me—will you not fight for your own life?”
He thought awhile, and then answered stubbornly, “No.”
Mellis drew a deep breath.
“Before God, then, will you fight for mine?”
He faltered, looked at her, and his face flamed to her challenge.
“For you? To save you?”
He bowed his head.
“Yes—to the death, so that you may live.”
She held out her hands to him, her eyes shining.
“Martin Valliant, let us be comrades, let us swear troth to each other.”
But he looked at her hands as though he dared not touch them.
“I am a priest no more,” he said, “but an outlaw. So be it, though God
has dealt strangely with me.”
He turned his head and looked at the great cross.
“The shape of a sword!”
“There is a noble spirit in it, Martin Valliant.”
“It shall be a cross—and a sword,” he answered her.
_Chapter XVIII_
So Martin Valliant became an outlaw, Nature being stronger than the
ingenious folly of dead saints.
It was Mellis who captained the adventure, for she was quicker in
thought than Martin, and the day’s happenings had stunned him not a
little.
She had her eyes on Woodmere, and both heart and head justified the
choice. It was nearer to Troy Castle than the Black Moor, but this
disadvantage was overbalanced by many virtues. The place lay in the
thick of the woods; its broad mere made it very safe; and with but
little labor the house itself could be put into a good state for
defense. Arms and stores were hidden there. Moreover, it lay in the Red
Rose country, where the Forest folk were most bitter against the Lord of
Troy. John Falconer held Badger Hill; the Blounts were at Bloody Rood,
just south of the Rondel toward the west. Mellis counted on the Forest
rallying to her when the secret word went forth that Richmond was
crossing the seas.
“To horse, good comrade; or rather you and I will have to march and load
the baggage on my horse. Have you much store of food?”
“Half a sack of flour, and some yeast.”
“Empty your cupboard into a couple of sacks. I will go and harness the
horse.”
Martin Valliant was looking at the dead men. He loitered a moment, as
though he could not decide what should be done with them.
“No, I’ll not touch them,” he said to himself. “I am a man of blood; let
others do what is right and good.”
He locked up the chapel and left the key hanging on a nail in his cell,
nor did he touch anything in the cell itself save the food in the
cupboard and larder. A couple of sacks served for the stowing away of
the flour, the yeast, a bottle or two of wine, a paper of dried herbs,
and some salted meat. He tied up the mouths of the sacks and carried
them down to the stable.
Mellis showed herself a very practical young woman.
“Fasten those two sacks together, and we can sling them like panniers.
Now, what else would make useful plunder? A coil of rope, if you have
such a thing.”
Martin remembered seeing a coil hanging in Father Jude’s tool-house.
“Wait—and a felling ax and a crowbar. I’ll come with you.”
They ransacked the tool-house, and Mellis blessed Father Jude.
“The rope, yes, and that felling ax. This is a treasury, good comrade.
Take that saw, and the mattock and spade.”
“Here’s a crowbar.”
“Oh, brave man! We shall bless these tools to-morrow. That big maul,
too, and the billhook, and that auger hanging there.”
“I can use the rope to lash them into a bundle.”
“Of course. Give me the saw, the auger, and the billhook.”
Martin laid the rest of the tools on the ground, and lashed them
together by the handles. He tried the weight of the bundle.
“Your horse will not bless us. I could shoulder these things.”
“Seven miles?”
“It is not the weight, but an awkward bale to tie on a horse’s back.”
“Here’s a sack and some cord; wrap it around the handles; we can sling
the food one side and the tools the other. The horse must make the best
of it.”
Her word was law for the moment, both to Martin Valliant and the beast.
She stood by while he loaded the things on to the horse’s back, watching
him critically and the way he used his big brown hands.
“Can you ride a horse?” she asked him.
He smiled around at her gravely.
“I have broken in colts at Paradise.”
“Was that monk’s work?”
“I was young, and even a monk is none the worse for learning to handle
an untamed thing and to keep his temper.”
She nodded approvingly.
“That may help us. Can you use a bow?”
“Passably. As a boy I used to carry a prodd and shoot at the crows.”
“The long bow for a forester; the arbalist is only for townsmen.”
“I could hit a sheaf of corn at fifty paces when I was younger.”
“You will have to grow young again. And traps—can you set a snare as a
bird-trap?”
“No.”
“I am thinking of our larder,” she explained. “Outlaws are not fed by
ravens.”
The sun had swung well into the west when they were ready to start upon
their journey. Mellis went to the great cross, and from its knoll she
scanned the moor, but could see no live thing moving anywhere. Martin
stood by the horse, leaning on his hollywood staff and staring at the
ground, trying to convince himself that he was not dreaming. He saw
Mellis come back and turn her head so as not to see those dead things
lying by the rest-house. Yes, the business was real enough. He had but
to look at Mellis, and the knowledge leaped in him that the Martin
Valliant of yesterday was dead.
“I can see no one moving. The sooner we are lost to view in the woods,
the better it will be for us.”
His tragic face touched her, but she let him alone, and taking the
horse’s bridle, started over the moor.
Martin followed her like a dog. He moved mechanically, watching her with
a kind of sorrowful bewilderment, marching toward the new world with a
heart that was very heavy. A man’s whole life cannot be overturned and
broken in a day without the shock of it leaving him dazed and full of a
dull distrust. To have become a murderer, to find himself tramping at
the heels of a young woman whose eyes bewitched him, to know that there
was a likelihood of both of them being hanged—these amazing realities
hung heavy about Martin Valliant’s neck.
Once or twice Mellis glanced back over her shoulder. She had divined
what was passing in Martin Valliant’s heart; she half expected to find
herself alone, or to see him stalking away over the moor. Had she
suffered less herself, she might have reasoned with him, tried to spur
him against the world; but her own heart was full of sadness, and sorrow
is a great teacher. She had fought to save him from his own fanaticism,
and she had won a victory; but she was too full of pity for the man to
torture him with more grim home-truths. Fate seemed to have tossed them
together into the unknown. She chose to let Fate settle the matter. The
man should be free to repent and go.
They crossed the moor and reached the beech woods without adventure, and
Mellis’s heart beat with a lessened feeling of suspense when the green
trees hid them. It was one of those soft, cloudy, windless days when the
Forest seemed to gather an added mystery, and the great aisles looked
more solemn, hiding strange secrets.
“It is good to be here.”
She breathed the words like a prayer.
“There is no cleaner thing than the Forest. The trees have no sins to
remember.”
Martin did not answer her. He was gazing along the green aisles and up
into the tops of the great trees where a vague shimmer of light played
above the black branches. The stillness was miraculous; not a leaf was
moving; the huge gray trunks looked strong enough to carry the world.
Then he fell to watching the figure of the girl in front of him, with
its gown of green that seemed part of the woodland. She walked lightly,
bravely, the horse plodding placidly at her heels as though he
recognized in her a wise power that was to be trusted and obeyed. And in
watching her Martin Valliant was led toward a new humility, and an
unforeseen conquest of his own perplexities.
It was her loneliness, and her courage in bearing it, that routed the
scandalized selfishness of the monk and stirred the deeper compassion of
the man. He remembered yesterday’s despair in her eyes and the words of
anguish he had heard her utter. She seemed to stand alone in this great
wilderness, a wounded thing at the mercy of some brutal chance, a white
martyr to be torn and ravished by such ruffians as Noble Vance. What
were his own sorrows compared with hers? How much more grim and real the
dangers that threatened her!
A sudden shame seized him; his eyes lost their sullen, doubting look;
his face became transfigured. He had been worshiping self all the while,
and, like a Pharisee, he had broken into pious wailings because blood
had spotted his precious robe. Yes, he had made an idol of his own
sinlessness, bowed down to it, thought of it as the one great thing in
the world.
The soft green light under the trees seemed like the light of a
sanctuary, and an awed look stole into Martin’s eyes. He followed Mellis
in silence, nor did she speak to him, and all the while that great
change was working in his soul. Here was something to serve, a thing of
flesh and blood, nobler than any altar of stone. He felt that he could
lay down his life for her, and that God Himself would not turn from such
a sacrifice.
From that moment Martin Valliant’s soul felt strong and calm in him. His
eyes no longer looked back at the old life; he set his face steadily
toward the future.
Now Mellis knew nothing of all this, of the man’s uprising from the
wounded horror of his blood-stained self. They had come to the high
ground, above the Rondel, and could see the river glimmering in the
green deeps below. It was time to eat and rest, and she called a halt.
“Are you footsore, comrade?”
“No; nor sore at heart.”
She gave him a quick, searching look, and his face surprised her. It was
serene, steadfast, and its eyes were very gentle. All that tangle of
doubt and self-horror had been wiped away.
She said nothing. He made a movement to take the horse’s bridle from
her.
“I will unload the horse and let him feed. There is a patch of grass
there. Sit down and rest.”
They looked into each other’s eyes.
“Pain wearies the heart,” she said.
“You shall ride the horse and I will carry the baggage.”
“No, but you shall not.”
“We will see,” he answered her.
It was Martin who served. He unbuckled the horse’s bridle and made a
tether of it, so that the beast could feed. Then he unloaded the
baggage, opened one of the sacks, and took out bread, meat, and some
wine. Mellis had thrown herself down under a beech tree where the moss
was like a green carpet, and Martin served her with wine and bread.
Her eyes met his with a new softness. Something had happened to Martin
Valliant; he was a changed man. He offered her a new calm strength upon
which she could lean, and in her loneliness her heart thanked him. She
wanted to rest, to close her eyes for a moment, to let the burden of her
fate lie for a moment on a man’s shoulders.
He watched her eat, and forgot that he was hungry. She had to chide him.
“No man is strong enough to go hungry. And there is much work to be
done.”
They sat and looked at the river flowing in the valley at their feet.
Martin’s memories of yesterday were growing sacred; he hoarded them in
his heart.
“Yonder is the ford.”
She pointed with her poniard.
“It was wise of us to halt here. That might be a dangerous passage for
us if enemies were near.”
But no hostile thing showed itself; the river was like a silver dream in
the green slumber of the woods.
When they had finished their meal and rested awhile, Martin roped up the
baggage and untethered the horse.
“You will ride for an hour.”
Mellis rebelled.
“No; you cannot shoulder all that gear.”
“Let us see.”
He slung the sacks over one shoulder, one in front and one behind, and
hoisted the tools on to the other.
“I am younger than the horse.”
Something in his eyes persuaded her to humor him.
“It is good to be strong,” she said.
And Martin felt strangely happy.
She mounted, and they went down to the ford. Mellis rode in to show the
way, and Martin splashed after her, planting his feet carefully, for the
bottom was full of pebbles.
She looked back.
“Remember the flour.”
For the first time he saw a gleam of laughter in her eyes, a glimmer of
sweet youthfulness.
“It shall come to no harm,” he answered, smiling back, and thinking her
the most beautiful thing in the world.
_Chapter XIX_
The day was far spent when they came to the valley in the heart of the
woods where the ruined house of the Dales stood on that white blossoming
island in the midst of the water. Mellis had dismounted half a league
from the ford, and had refused to go forward until Martin had loaded the
baggage again on the horse’s back.
“I am rested,” she had said, “and your strength is precious. Let the
beast bear the burden for which he was born.”
Martin Valliant had to hide the vivid memories of yesterday, but as he
stood at Mellis’s side on the edge of the beech wood and looked down
upon Woodmere, he could but marvel at the strangeness of life. Here was
he beside her, her comrade in arms, an outlaw, a man who had thrown the
future into the melting-pot of fate. And as he watched a world of
tenderness and yearning swim into her eyes, his soul stood stoutly to
its outlawry. His muscles were made to serve her, and he thanked God for
his strength.
“That was our home.”
She looked long at it, her lips trembling, her bosom rising and falling
with emotion.
“Gilbert will never see it again. We used to draw pictures in France,
and in his fancy the apple trees were always pink and white, just as
they are now.”
Martin could find no words to utter. He wanted to touch her, to make her
feel that he understood.
But she broke loose from these sad thoughts, rallied herself to face the
fiercer issue.
“The valley looks empty.”
They scanned it keenly.
“Not a soul.”
“They will not leave us in peace for very long, and the hours will be
precious. Come.”
Martin shut his eyes for a moment. He could not forget that vision of
her with her dark hair clouding about her body. But the vision was
sacred.
“You see, the bridge is broken.”
He had to pretend his innocence.
“And there is no boat?”
“It is rotting in the mud.”
They went down to the water’s edge, and Martin tied the horse to one of
the willows. He paid homage to her forethought in the bringing of those
tools.
“We shall have to build a bridge.”
Already she was pushing her way through the scrub, and Martin followed
her. There were two gaps to be dealt with, one where the arch had
fallen, and a second where the drawbridge should have served.
“The trunks of a few young trees thrown across.”
“Yes—but the horse.”
“We could leave him on this side for the night.”
She stared at the gate-house.
“Perhaps. But we shall want a bridge that can be drawn in, to keep out
chance visitors. The gate, too, is off its hinges, and broken. I know
where a beam is hidden, but I doubt whether we can lift it.”
“There is the rope—and I am strong.”
Her eyes looked him over with critical praise.
“Yes, you are bigger than your father. If we could throw a couple of
young ash trees across the first gulf. There is a thicket of ashes down
yonder.”
Martin needed no second word from her. He had the tools off the horse’s
back, and the ax on his shoulder.
“Which way?”
“Over there. I’ll take the billhook and lop off the boughs while you do
the felling.”
They started away like a couple of children, full of the adventure, and
Martin was soon at work in a thicket of ash trees that had been planted
some twenty years before. He chose a tree and had it down with six
clean, slanting blows of the ax, so that the cuts clove wedgewise into
the trunk.
“Oh, brave man! That was woodman’s skill.”
She fell to clearing the trunk of its top and side branches while Martin
threw a second tree. He felled four, and shouldered them one by one up
to the bridge end, and here his great strength served. These ash spars
were no broomsticks, and he had to spear them forward over the gap, and
keep their ends from dropping into the water.
“Brave comrade! Well done!”
She cheered his triumph.
“And now a few willow withies.”
He took the bill, lopped off some willow boughs, and then, straddling
his way along the ash trunks, lashed them together with the withies. The
thing made a very passable bridge. Martin tested it, and was happy.
“A few more trees, and some earth rammed on the top, and the horse will
be safe across.”
“Yes—to-morrow. It is growing late. Now for the beam I told you of.”
It was lying in the sluice ditch under a smother of brambles and young
thorns, a great balk of timber all sodden with damp, fifteen feet long,
six inches thick, and a foot in breadth. Two men might have shirked
carrying it twenty yards; but Martin, in that springtime of his love,
dragged it out upon the grass.
“Good saints, but you are strong!”
She tossed him the rope.
“Throw a noose around it. I can help at pulling.”
They got the beam to the bridge, across the platform of ash trees, and
so to the place where the drawbridge should have been, and here the
business baffled them. The thing was far too ponderous to be thrust
across like a plank.
Martin solved the riddle. He had to fell two more small trees, lay them
across, and straddle his way over. Then he climbed the stair to the
broken gate-house and bade Mellis throw him the rope. The first two
casts failed, but the third succeeded. They swung the great beam across
between them, Martin keeping his end raised by straining the rope over
the wall.
He saw Mellis run lightly across, and scrambling back along the wall and
down the stone stairway built in the angle of the gate-house, he joined
her in the courtyard. The sun hung low over the tops of the trees, and
its level rays threw the blackened beams of the burned roof of the hall
into grim relief. The whole place had been gutted, with the exception of
the little octagonal tower to the south of the hall, and one or two
outhouses lying beyond the garden. The gate-house was just a stone
shell, the charred gate lying rotting in a bed of nettles.
The evening light played in Mellis’s eyes, and Martin Valliant held his
peace for the moment. Her lips moved as though she were repeating some
promise she had made. It crossed his mind that she might wish to be
alone, so he went back across the bridge and carried the two sacks and
the tools over.
She called to him.
“Martin—Martin!”
She had opened a door that led from the courtyard into the garden, and
stood waiting for him.
“Let us look everywhere. I want to be sure that no one has been here
before us.”
She wandered out into the garden, a sweet and tangled place, sloping
toward the sunset. The walks had gone back to grass, and the rose bushes
were smothered with brambles. The four clipped yews by the sundial had
grown into shaggy trees, and the herbs in the borders lived the life of
the woods. Wild flowers had taken possession, buttercups, ragged robin,
purple vetches, and great white daisies. There was a nut walk that had
grown into a green tunnel; and a stone seat on the terrace under the
wall of the house was almost hidden by bushes that had sprung up between
the stones.
“This was a garden, and that was my mother’s seat. Men are very cruel.”
“And yet the place is very beautiful,” he said.
“With the beauty of sadness and of pain.”
In one of the borders she found an old rose bush that was budding into
bloom, and one red flower had opened its petals. Her eyes glimmered.
“Why—this is a miracle!”
She plucked the rose, kissed it, smelled its perfume.
“Red is our color.”
And then a thought struck her.
“Comrade in arms, you are for Lancaster; here is your badge.”
She gave him the rose, and Martin touched it with his lips as she passed
on down the garden.