He wins who woos.
Hávamál.
The hot glare of a July sun was on the stones of the Watling Street and
July winds were driving hosts of battling dust-clouds along the
highway, but in the herb garden of Saint Mildred’s cool shadows lay
over the dew-beaded grass and all was restfulness and peace. The voice
of the girl who was following Sister Wynfreda from mint clump to
parsley bed, from fennel to rue, was not much louder than the droning
of the bees in the lavender.
“If it be true as you say,—” she was speaking with the passionate
bitterness of wounded youth,—“if it be true that in his place anyone
would have believed what he believed, then is this a very hateful world
and I want no further part in it.”
Over the fragrant leaves which she was touching as fondly as if they
had been children’s faces, Sister Wynfreda gently shook her head.
“Think not that it is altogether through the world’s evil-heartedness,
dear child. Think rather that it is because mankind is not always brave
and shrinks from disappointment, that it dares not believe in good
until good is proved.”
“I know that one dares not always believe in happiness,” the girl
conceded slowly, “for when my happiness was like a green swelling wave,
white fear sprang from the crest of it and it fell—Sister, did that
forebode my sorrow?”
Awhile, the nun’s eyes widened and paled as eyes that see a vision, but
at last she bowed her head to trace a cross upon her breast. “Not so;
it is God’s wisdom,” she said, “else would the world be so beautiful
that we would never hunger after heaven.”
Mechanically, Randalin’s hands followed hers through the holy sign;
then she clasped them before her to wring them in impatient pain. “That
is so long to go hungry, Sister! I shall be past my appetite.” Dropping
down beside the other, her slim young fingers began to imitate the
gnarled old ones as they weeded and straightened. “I wonder at it,
Sister Wynfreda, that you do not urge me to creep in with you. A year
ago, you wanted it when I wanted it not; but now when I am willing, you
hold me off.”
“Is it clear before your mind that you are willing, my daughter?” the
nun asked gently. As she drew herself to her feet with the aid of a
bush, the cramping of her feeble stiffened muscles contracted her face
in momentary pain, but her eyes were serene as the altar lamps. “It
lies upon you to remember, little sister, that those who would serve
God around the altar must not go thither only because the world has
mistreated them and they would cast it off to avenge the smart. She who
puts on the yoke of Christ must needs do so because it is the thing she
would desire of all, were all precious things spread out for her
choosing. Can you look into my eyes and say that it would be so with
you?”
Where she knelt before her, the girl suddenly threw her arms around the
woman and hid her face in the faded robes. The frail hand stroked the
dark hair affectionately. “Think not that I would upbraid you with it,
child as dear as my own heart. When the Power that took you from me led
you back again, and I read what God’s fingers had written on your face
that before was like a lineless parchment, I could not find it in my
mind to wish you otherwise. I felt only shame for the weakness of my
faith, and joy past all telling.”
Under the soothing hand, Randalin’s sobs slowly ceased; when at last
she raised her wet eyes there was no longer rebellion in them but only
youth’s measureless despair. “Sister, now as always, I want to do what
you would have me—but I am so full of grief! Must I go back to Avalcomb
and begin all over again? It seems to me that my life stretches before
me no more alluringly than yonder dusty road, that runs straight on,
on, over vast spaces but always empty.”
The beauty that had been Sister Wynfreda’s hovered now about her mouth
as fragrance around a dead rose. Her gaze was on a branch above them
where a little brown bird, calling plaintively, was slipping from her
nest. Over the wattled edge, two tiny brown heads were peeping like
fuzzy beech-nut rinds. “I wonder,” she said, “what those little
creatures up there will think when a few months hence the blue sky
becomes leaden, such that no one of them ever before recollected it so
dark, and the sun that is wont to creep to them through the leaves has
gone out like a candle before the winter winds? By reason of their
youth, I suppose they will judiciously conclude with themselves that
there is never going to be any blue sky again, that their lives will
stretch before them in a dark-hued stress of weather, empty of all save
leafless trees and frozen fields. My fledgeling, will they not be a
little ashamed of their short-sightedness when the spring has brought
back the sun?”
The girl’s lips parted before her quickening breath, and the old nun
smiled at her tenderly as she moved away with her hands full of the
green symbols of healing. “Settle not the whole day of your life at its
morning, most dear child, but live it hour by hour,” she said. “If you
would be of use now, go gather the flowers for the Holy Table, and when
themselves have drawn in holiness from the spot, then shall you bring
them to the sick woman over the hill.”
“Yes, Sister,” the girl said submissively. But when she had crossed the
daisied grass and opened the wicket gate and came out into the fragrant
lane, something seemed to divide her mind with the roses, for though
she sent one glance toward the hedge, she sent another to the spot
beyond—where the lane gave out upon the great Street to the City—and
after she had walked a little way toward the flowers, she turned and
walked a long way toward the road, until she had come where her eyes
could follow its white track far away over the hills.
“I wonder if I shall ever hunger for heaven as I hunger for the sight
of him,” she murmured as she gazed.
But whatever the valleys might hold, the hillsides showed her nothing;
sighing, she turned back. “It seems to me,” she said, “that if we could
have little tastes of heaven as we went along, then would there still
be enough left and the road would seem much shorter.” Sighing, she set
to work upon the roses, that had twined themselves in a kindly veil
over the bushes.
Standing so, it happened that she did not see the horseman who was just
gaining the crest of the nearest hill between her and the City. The
wind being from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the
horse had turned from the glare of the sun into the shadow of the
fern-bordered lane. The first she knew of it, she glanced over her
shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure riding toward her along the
grass-grown path.
As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she
leaned toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally
natural, as he leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and
half averted her face, flickering red and white like the blossoms she
was clasping to her breast.
He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of grass still between them,—and
it soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any
confident ease in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His
voice was greatly troubled as he spoke: “Never can I forgive myself for
having wounded you, sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive
me, because I knew not what I did and because I have suffered so sorely
for it.”
“_You_ have suffered,” she repeated with a little accent of bitterness.
“I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!” Hesitation gave
way before a warmth of reproach. “For a man to know that he has wounded
what he would have died to shield—that he has wronged where he would
have given his life to honor—that it may be he has lost what is body
and soul to him,—what else is that but suffering?”
It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could
not see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood
looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head
taught him a new rune among love’s spells. Drawing softly near her, he
spoke in noblest conciliation: “Is it your pride that cannot pardon me,
Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I
forget to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in
prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would
stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear
one.” Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,—and the difference
between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was
the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. “Thus then do
I ask you to give me back your love,” he said gently,—and would have
said more but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.
“It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have
told me that—that I have no right to be angry with you—” She broke off,
as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into
forgetfulness of all else. “Why are your cheeks so hollow?” she
demanded. “And so gray—as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has
come near you?”
He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for
him, even while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more
than the fatigue of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food,
perhaps, as he had been somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep
because of—
But she was a warrior’s daughter, and she would not be put off. Coming
close to him, she pulled aside the dusty cloak, hot as a live coal in
the glare of the day, and there—behold!—there were blood stains on the
breast of his blue kirtle. Forgetful of everything else, she flung her
arms around him as though to shield him. “Sebert, you are wounded! What
is it?”
Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face
had grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the
reaction to answer her as gravely as possible: “It is Rothgar
Lodbroksson, whom I met coming from the City as I was journeying back
from my errand in Northampton. Little affection has ever passed between
us, and this time something more than usual seemed to have stirred him
against me, for—”
“He tried to kill you!” The words were not a question but a breathless
assertion as she remembered the Jotun’s last threat.
“He tried to kill me,” the Marshal assented quietly. “And his blade did
manage to pierce my mail; he is a giant in strength as in other things.
But it cut no more than flesh; and after that, Fortune wheeled not
toward him.”
“You slew him!” Her lips were white as she gasped it, but he knew now
that it was no love for the Jotun that moved her, and he answered
promptly to her unspoken thought: “No, sweet,—for the King’s sake, I
spared him. Before this, his men have taken him aboard his ship and
England is rid of him.”
Murmuring broken phrases of thanksgiving, she stood holding the cloak
she had grasped, but he dreaded too much the moment of her awakening to
await its coming inactive. Slipping his arms around her, he began to
speak swiftly, the moment her silence gave him an opening.
“Never did I blame Rothgar much for his enmity against me, and now I
thank him for this cut as for a gift, for through it I know that at
least you have not outlawed me from your love. Dear one, as you are not
unkind to so slight a thing as this wound in my flesh, so neither be
without pity for the one that is so much deeper, in my heart! As the
scratch stayed your anger for a while, so, in the gentleness of love,
let this which is mortal stay it for all time.”
With his arms around her, she could not shrink very far away,—nor was
it seen that she tried to,—but all at once her words came in uneven
rushes: “How can I hold anger against you when, with every breath, my
lips sigh for your kisses? Yet let no one wonder at it that I am
frightened... You cannot conceive what a lurking place for terrors the
world looks to me! Never, I think, shall I see men sitting together
that I shall not suspect them of having murder in their hearts. Never
shall I see two friends clasp hands but my mind will run forward to a
time when they shall part in wrath and loneliness. Nay, even of the
sound of my own voice I am afraid, lest whomsoever is hearing it—for
all that he speak me fair—be twisting the words in his mind into evils
I have not dreamed of. Sebert, I do not reproach you with it! I think
it all the fault of my own blunders,—and therein I find a new terror.
That one should suffer for wrong-doing is to be looked for, but if one
is to be dealt with so unsparingly only for making mistakes, who knows
where his position is or what to expect? Oh, my best friend, make me
brave or I am likely to die only through fearing to live! With my
ignorance my boldness went from me, until now my courage is lowly as a
willow leaf. Love, make me brave again!” Trusting, in her very
declaration of distrust, she clung to him to save her from herself.
It was in the briar-pricked fingers, which he was pressing against his
cheek, that he found his answer. Suddenly he spread them out in his
palm before her, laughing with joyful lightness. “Randalin, the thorns
wounded your hands the while that you stripped yonder hedge, but did
you stop for that? If I can prove to you that all these dark days you
have been but plucking roses, can you not bravely bear with the
pricks?”
Putting her gently from him, he gathered up the spoils she had let
fall, picking from among them with great care the fairest of either
kind, while she, catching his mood, watched him April-faced. “This,” he
said gaily, “is the red rose of my heart. Battle-fields lay between us
and tower walls, and the way was long and hard to find, yet can you
deny, my elf, that you came in and plucked it and wore it away in your
hair,—to keep or to cast aside as pleased you?”
Smiles and tears growing together, she caught the blossom from him and
pressed it to her lips. “I will wear it in my bosom,” she answered,
“for my breast has been empty—since the day I saw you first.”
Smiling, he held out the white rose, but his mood had deepened until
now he looked down upon her as he had looked down upon her in the
moonlit forest. “This, beloved, is the symbol of my faith,” he said.
“Your eyes took it from me that day at even-song. I hold it the dearer
of the two, for with it goes my honor that is as stainless as its
petals. It is worth more than life to me,—is it not worth some pricks
to you?”
She took it from him reverently, to lay it beside the other, and as her
face was too proud for fear so was it too tender for jesting. “I am
more honored,” she told him, “than Canute by his crown; and I will live
as bravely to defend them.”
But as he would have caught her to him, she leaned back suddenly to
stretch a hand toward a dark-robed figure standing under the moss-grown
arch, and her pride melted into a laugh of breathless happiness.
“Sister Wynfreda, you were very right,” she called softly, “the world
can be so beautiful that one has no hunger for heaven.”