THREE AT TORTSENTIER
At Tortsentier there was very little daylight, because the trees about
it formed a thick wall. The branches of the pines tapped at the windows
on one side; on the other they linked arms with their comrades, and so
stood for a mile on all sides of the tower. Paths there were none, nor
ways to come by unless you were free of the place. The winter storms
moaned, lashed themselves above it, yet below were hushed down to a
long sighing. The quiet visitations of the snow, the dripping of the
autumn rains, the sun's force, the trap-bite of the frost, or that new
breath that comes stealing through woodlands in spring, were all
strangers alike to the carpet of brown needles about Maulfry's hold. No
birds ever sang there. Death and a great mystery, the dark, air like a
lake's at noon, kept fur and feather from Tortsentier, and left Maulfry
alone with what she had.
Within, it was a spacious place. A great hall ran the whole height
(although not the whole area) of it, having a gallery midway up whence
you gained what other chambers there were. Below the gallery were deep
alcoves hung with tapestry (of which Maulfry was a diligent worker),
and thickened with curtains; between every alcove hung trophies of
shields and arms. Mossy carpets, skins, and piled cushions were on the
floor; the place smelt of musk: it was lighted by coloured torches and
lamps, and warmed with braziers. It was by a spiral stair that you
found the gallery and doors of the other rooms, or as many of them as
it was fitting you should find. There were doors there which were no
doors at all unless occasion served. These rooms had windows; but the
hall had only a lantern in the roof, and its torches. From all this it
will appear that Isoult was a prisoner, since a prisoner you are if,
although you can go out, there is nowhere for you to go; if, further,
your hostess neither goes out herself nor gives you occasion to leave
her. Yet Maulfry made her guest elaborately free of the place.
"Child," she said, "you see how I live here. My trees, my birds--" she
had many birds in cages--"my collections of arms and arras and odd
books, are my friends for want of better. If you can help me to any
such I shall be very much obliged to you. Other friends I
have--yourself I may count among them, one other you know,--but they
are of the world, and refuse to hang upon my walls. Sometimes they pay
me a visit, stay for a little season, remonstrate, argue with me,
shrug, and leave me gladder than I was to receive them. I am a hermit,
my child, when all's said. These other friends, these more constant
friends, on the other hand, suit me better. They talk to me when I bid
them, are silent when I want to think. They have no vapours, unless I
give them of mine, no airs but what I choose to find in them. And they
are complaisant, they seek nothing beyond my entertainment. My friends
from outside come to please themselves and to take what they can of my
store. Sometimes they take each other. One of them (not unknown to my
Isoult!) will come before long--he is overdue now--and find my store
enriched. I doubt he will turn thief. You may well blush, child, for,
apart that it becomes you admirably, thieving is a sin, and naturally
you cannot approve of it. It is to be hoped he has rifled no treasury
already. There, there, I have your word for it; but you know my way!
Living alone in the woods at a distance from men, which makes them ants
in a swarm for me, I become a philosopher. Can you wonder?"
To such harangues, delivered with a pretty air of mockery and
extravagance, which was never allowed to get out of hand, Isoult
listened as she had listened to the cheerful prophetics of the Abbess
of Gracedieu, with her gentle smile and her locked lips. Maulfry talked
by the hour together while she and Isoult sat weaving a tapestry. For
the philosopher which it seemed she was, the subject of the piece was
very pleasant. It was the story of Troilus and Cresseide, no less,
wherein Sir Pandarus, (departing from the custom) was represented a
young man of tall and handsome presence, and the triangle of lovers
like children. Diomede was an apple-cheeked school-boy, Troilus had a
tunic and bare legs, Cresseide in her spare moments dandled a doll.
Calchas, for his part, kept a dame-school in this piece, which for the
rest was treated with a singular freedom. Isoult, poor girl, was
occasionally troubled at her part of the work; but the philosopher
laughed heartily at her.
"What ails thee with the piece, child?" she would cry out in her hearty
way. "Dost thou think lovers are men and women, to be taken seriously?
It is to be hoped they are not, forsooth! For if they are not innocent,
what shall be said of their antics?" and more to the same tune.
While affecting to treat her with freedom, Maulfry kept in reality a
steady rein.
"Go out?" she would cry in mock dismay, at the least hint of such a
wish from the girl--"why under the sun should we go out? To see a
thicket of twigs and breathe rotten vapours? Or do you think we have
processions passing in and out of the tree-trunks? Ah, minx, 'tis a
procession of one you would be spying for! Nay, nay, never look big
eyes at me, child. I know your processioner better than you. He will
come in his time; and whether he come through the door or down the
stairs I cannot tell you yet. Who taught you, pray, that he was in the
wood? Not I, I vow. Why should he not be skulking in the blue alcove
awaiting the hour? You look thither; how you kindle at a word! Well,
well, go and see for yourself if he is in the blue alcove."
Poor trembling Isoult went on tiptoe, was fool enough to peep through
the curtains, but good soul enough to take Maulfry's railing in fair
part. She got as much as she deserved, and the joke was none too good
perhaps; but as a trick, it sufficed to keep her on the fine edge of
expectation. She dared not go out for fear of missing Prosper. She grew
so tight-strung as to doubt of nothing. Had Maulfry told her he would
be with them to supper on such and such a night, she would have come
shaking to the meal, rosy as a new bride, nothing doubting but that the
next lift of her shy eyes would reveal him before her. Thus Maulfry by
hints in easy degrees led her on; and not only did she not dare to go
out, but she lost all wish to peer for him in the wood, because she had
been led to the conviction that he was actually in the tower--a
mysterious, harboured visitant who would appear late or soon, obedient
to his destiny. A door even was pointed at, smiled and winked at,
passed by light-foot as they went along the gallery. Maulfry had a
biting humour which sometimes led her further than she was aware.
She kept Isoult in a fever by her tricks; by this particular trick she
risked a different fire--jealousy. For of the four persons who made up
the household, she alone went behind that door. Vincent, the young
page, brought food and wine to the threshold; Maulfry came out and took
them in. But there she was perfectly safe. Isoult could never be
jealous of Prosper; she would despair, but would resent nothing he
might do. Jealousy requires two things exorbitantly--self-love and a
sensitive surface. Isoult loved Love and Prosper--the two in one
glorious image; and as for her surface, that, like the rest of her,
body and soul, was his when Love allowed. Nor was she even curious, at
first. Many thrashings, acquaintance with her world which was close if
not long, and a deeply-driven scorn of herself threw her blindly upon
the discretion of the only man she had ever found to be at once
splendid and humane. What he chose was the law and what he declared the
prophets. But she might get curious on other grounds, on grounds where
destiny and suchlike mannish appendages did not hold up a finger at
her. And in fact she did.
* * * * *
Meantime Maulfry took charge of her body and will. Isoult was obedient
in everything but one. Maulfry, who always saw the girl undress and go
to bed, objected to her prayers.
"Pray!" she would call out, "for what and to what do you pray? Pray to
your husband when you have one, and he will give you according to your
deserts, which he alone can appraise. Trust him for that. But to crave
boons you know little of, from a God of whom you know nothing at all,
save that you made him in your own image--what profit can that be?"
To which Isoult replied, "He told me always to pray, ma'am, and I
cannot disobey any of his words."
"Ah, I remember he was given to the game. Hum! And what else did he
tell you, child?"
"Deal justly, live cleanly, breathe sweet breath," Isoult answered in a
whisper, as if she were in church: "praise God when He is kind, bow
head and knees when He is angry, look for Him to be near at all times.
Do this, and beyond it trust to thine own heart."
Maulfry pished and pshawed at this hushed oracle. "You would do better
to eat well and sleep softly. 'Twould bring you nearer your heart's
desire. Men like a girl to be sleek."
But in this Isoult had her way, though she said her prayers in bed. In
all else she was meek as a mouse. Maulfry made her dress to suit her
own taste, and let down her hair. The dress was of thin silk, fitted
close, and was cut low in the neck. Isoult, who had known pinned rags,
and had gone feet and legs bare without a thought, went now as if she
were naked, or clothed only in her shame. But it was the fashion
Maulfry adopted towards her own person, and there were no others to
convict her. Nanno the old serving-woman and Vincent the page, who was
only a boy, made up the household-except for the closed door. Nanno
never looked at anything higher than the ground; and as for Vincent, he
was in love with Isoult, and would sooner have looked at Christ in
judgment.
Of those two people Nanno was believed to be dumb; Isoult, at least,
never got speech of her. Vincent, who was treated by Maulfry as if he
had been a mechanism, was a very simple machine. If Maulfry had been
less summary with him she might have prevented the inevitable; but like
all people with brains she thought a simpleton was an ass, and kicks
your only speech with such. Vincent and Isoult, therefore, became
friends as the days went on. Maulfry's cagebirds drew their heads
together, and in Vincent's case, at any rate, it was not long before
the blood began to beat livelier for the contact. Isoult was as simple
as he was, and concealed nothing from him that came up in their talks
together. She knew much more than he about birds, about the woods, the
country beyond the forest--great rolling sheep-pastures, dim stretches
of fen, sleepy rivers, the heaths and open lands about Malbank. Of all
these things which came to him through her voice almost with a breath
of their own roving air, he knew absolutely nothing, whereas there was
very little county-lore which she did not know. She seemed indeed to
him a woodland creature herself, in touch with the birds and beasts.
She could put her hand into a cage full of them; the little twinkling
eyes were steady upon her, but there was no fluttering or beating at
the bars. Her hand closed on the bird, drew it out: the next minute it
was free upon her shoulder, peeping into her sidelong face. She could
hold it up to her lips: it would take the seed from her. The horses
knew her call and her speaking voice. They would go and come, stand or
start, as she whispered in their pricked ears. Vincent thought she
might easily be a fairy. But, "No, Vincent," she would say to that, "I
am a very poor girl, poorer than you."
One day Vincent disputed this point.
"You go in silks and have pearls on your head."
"They are not mine, Vincent."
"My mistress loves you."
"Oh, in love I am very rich," said the girl.
"Everybody would love you, I think," he dared.
But she shook her head at this.
"I have not found that. I am not sure of anybody's love."
"I know of one person of whom you may be very sure," said the boy, out
of breath.
"But I never meant that when I said I was rich. I meant that I was rich
in love, not in being loved. Ah, no!"
"You ask not to be loved, Isoult?"
"Oh, it would be impossible to be loved as I mean, as I love."
"I would like to know that. Whom do you love?"
"Why, my lord, of course! Must I not love my lord?"
"Your lord!" stammered Vincent, red to the roots of his hair. "Your
lord! I never knew that you loved a lord." He gulped, and went on at
random--"And where is your lord?"
"I cannot tell. He may be in this castle. I only know that I shall see
him when his time comes."
"If he is in this castle, Isoult," said Vincent, sober again, "his time
is not yet."
She caught her breath.
"How do you know that?" she panted.
"I know that there is a great lord in the Red Chamber, him that Madam
Maulfry tends with her own hands."
"Ah, ah! You have seen him?"
"No, I have never seen him. He is very ill."
Isoult gazed at him, shocked to the soul. Ill, and she not near by!
"Oh, Vincent," she whispered. "Oh, Vincent!"
"Yes, Isoult,"--Vincent had caught some breath of her horror, and
whispered,--"Yes, Isoult, he is very ill. He has been ill since the
autumn, with bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. I know that is true,
though I have never seen him since he was brought here swathed up in a
litter; but I once saw Madam Maulfry bury something in the wood, very
early in the morning. And I was frightened. Ah! I have seen strange
things here, such as I dare not utter even now. So I watched my time
and dug up what she had concealed. They were bloody clothes, Isoult,
very many of them, and ells long! So it is true."
Isoult swayed about like a broken bough. Vincent ran to catch her,
fearing she would fall. He felt the shaking of her body under his
hands. That frightened him. He began to beseech.
"Isoult, dear Isoult, I have hurt you, I who would rather die, I
who--am very fond of you, Isoult. Look now, be yourself again--think of
this. He may not be ill by now; he is likely much better. I will find
out for you. Trust me to find it all out."
"No, no, no," she whispered in haste; "you must do nothing, can do
nothing. This is mine. I will find out."
"Will you ask Madam Maulfry?" said Vincent. "She will kill me if she
knows that I have told you. Not that I mind that," he added in his own
excuse, "but you will gain nothing that way."
"No," Isoult answered curtly. "I will find out by myself. Hush! Some
one is coming. Go now."
Vincent went slowly away, for he too heard the sweep of Maulfry's robe.
There was a long looking-glass in the wall, flickering over which
Isoult's eyes encountered their own woeful image-brooding, reproachful,
haunted eyes; this would never do for her present business. Determined
to meet craft with craft, she wried her mouth to a smile, she drove
peace into her eyes, took a bosomful of breath, and turned to be
actress for the first time in her life. This meant to realize and then
express herself. She was like to become an artist.
Towards the end of that night her brain swam with fatigue. She had had
to study, first Maulfry, second, her new self, third, her old self. In
studying Maulfry she began unconsciously to prepare for the shock to
come--the shock of a free-given faith, than which no crisis can be more
exquisite for a child. So far, however, she had no cause to distrust
her châtelaine's honour, nor even her judgment. Both, she doubted not,
were in Prosper's keeping.
Maulfry was in a gay, malicious humour. She pinched Isoult's cheek when
she met her.
"Tired of waiting, my minion?" she began.
"No, ma'am, I am not tired at all."
"That is well. I went by the eye-shine. So you are still patient for
the great reward! Well, build not too high, my dear. All men are alike,
as I find them."
"My reward is to serve, ma'am, not to win."
"It is a reward one may weary of with time. There may be too much
service where the slave is willing, child. But to win gives an appetite
for more winning; and so the game goes on."
Again, later on, she said--
"I should like him to see you tonight, child. He would be more
malleable set near such a fire. Your cheeks are burning bright! As for
your big eyes, I believe you burnish them. Do you know how handsome you
are, I wonder?"
"No one has ever told me that but you, ma'am," said Isoult, demure.
"Pooh, your glass will have told you. They don't lie."
"I never had a glass till I came here. Not even at the convent."
"And did you never get close enough to use somebody's eyes?" said
Maulfry, with a sly look.
Isoult had nothing to say to this. Touch her on the concrete of her
love, and she was always dumb.
"Well then, I will stay flattering you, and advise," Maulfry pursued.
"When that august one chooses to unveil, do you present yourself on
knees as you now are. In two minutes you will not be on your own, but
on his, if I know mankind."
Isoult changed the talk.
"Do you know, or can you tell me, when my lord will come out, ma'am?"
she ventured.
"Come out, child? Out of what? Out of a box?" Maulfry cried in mock
rage. "'Tis my belief you know as much as I do. 'Tis my belief you have
been at a keyhole."
Mockery gave way; the matter was serious.
"Remember now, Isoult, in doing that you will disobey a greater than I,
and as good a friend. And remember what disobedience may mean."
Again she changed her tone in view of Isoult's collapse.
"You look reproaches," she said; "your eyes seem to say, like a wounded
hare's, 'Strike me again. I must quiver, but I will never run.' So,
child, so, I was but half in earnest. You are an obedient child, and so
I will tell Messire, if by any chance I should see him first." And so
on, until they went to bed.
When at last that breathing space came, Isoult was nearly choked with
the fatigue of her artistic escapades; but there was no time to lose.
As soon as she dared she got up in the dark, put her cloak over her
night-dress, and crept out into the gallery. The door creaked as she
opened it; she stood white and quailing, while her heart beat like a
hammer. But nothing stirred. She went first to Maulfry's door and
listened. She heard her breathing. All fast there. Then like a hare she
fled on to the door she knew so well. There was a light under it: she
heard a rustle as of paper or parchment. Whoever was there was turning
the leaves of a book. In the silence which seemed to press upon her
ears and throb in them, she debated with herself what she should do.
She knew that there was indeed no question about it. If he was ill,
everything--all her humility and all his tacit authority--must give
way. There was but one place for a wife. Maulfry did not know she was
his wife. She listened again. Inside the room she now heard some one
shift in bed, and--surely that was a low groan. Oh, Lord! Oh, Love! She
turned the handle; she stood in the doorway; she saw Galors sitting up
in bed with a book on his knees, a lamp by his side. His sick face,
bandaged and swathed, glowered at her, with great hollow eyes and a
sour mouth dropped at one corner.
She stood unable to move or cry.
"All is well, dear friend," said Galors; "I did but shift and let a
little curse. Go to bed, Maulfry."
Isoult had the wit to withdraw. What little she had left after that
pointed a shaking finger at one thing only--flight. She had been
unutterably betrayed. Her conception of the universe reeled over and
was lost in fire. There was no time to think of it, none to be afraid;
she did what there was to do swiftly, with a clearer head than she had
believed herself capable of. She slipt back to her room without doubt
or terror, and put on the clothes in which she had come from the
convent, a grey gown with a leather girdle, woollen stockings, thick
shoes--over all a long red hooded cloak. This done she stood a moment
thinking. No, she dare not try the creaking door again; the window must
serve her turn. She opened it and looked out. Through the fretty
tracery of the firs she could see a frosty sky, blue-grey fining to
green, green to yellow where the moon swam, hard and bright. There was
not a breath of air.
She climbed at once on to the window-ledge, and stood, holding to the
jamb, looking down at the black below.
A great branch ran up to the wall at a right angle; it seemed made for
her intent. Sitting with your legs out of the window it was easy to
take hold of a branch. She tried; it was easy, but not in a cloak. So
she sat again on the sill, took off her cloak, and tried once more.
Soon she was out of the window, swinging by the branch. Then her feet
touched another, and very slowly (for she was panic-stricken at the
least noise) she worked her way downwards to the trunk of the great
tree. Once there it was easy; she was soon on the ground. But she had
no notion what to do next, save that she must do it at once--whither to
turn, how to get out of the wood the best and safest way. Then another
thing struck her. She would be chased, that was of course. She had been
chased before, and tracked, and caught. Little as she could dare that,
what chance had she, a young girl flying loose in this part of the
forest, a young girl decently dressed, looking as she knew now that she
looked; what chance had she indeed? Well, what was she to do? She
remembered Vincent.
Vincent and Nanno did not sleep in the tower: that would have been
inconvenient in Maulfry's view. They had a little outhouse not ten
paces from it, and slept there. Thither went Isoult, jumping at every
snapt twig; the door yielded easily, but which bed should she try?
Nanno, she knew, snored, for Vincent had once made her laugh by
recounting his troubles under the spell of it. Well, the left-hand bed
was undoubtedly Nanno's at that rate; Isoult went to the right-hand bed
and felt delicately with her hand at its head. Vincent's curls!
Then she knelt down and put her face close to the boy's, whispering in
his ear.
"Whisper, Vincent, whisper," she said; "whisper back to me. Do you love
me, Vincent? Whisper."
"You know that I love you, Isoult," Vincent whispered. "Hush! not too
loud," said she again. "Vincent, will you get up and come into the wood
with me? I want to tell you something. Will you come very quietly
indeed?"
"Yes," said Vincent. The whole breathless intercourse worked into his
dreams of her; but he woke and sat up.
"Come," said Isoult. She crept out again to wait for him.
Vincent came out in his night-gown. The moon showed him rather scared,
but there was no doubt about his sentiments. Love-blind Isoult herself
could have no doubt. She lost no time.
"Vincent, I must tell you everything. I shall be in your hands, at your
mercy. I must go away at once, Vincent. If I stay another hour I shall
never see the daylight again. They will kill me, Vincent, or do that
which no one can speak of. Then I shall kill myself. This is quite
true. I have seen something to-night. There is no doubt at all. Will
you help me, Vincent?"
Vincent gaped at her. "How--what--why--what shall I do?" he murmured,
beginning to tremble. "Oh, Isoult, you know how I--what I whispered--!"
"Yes, yes, I know. That is why I came. You must do exactly what I tell
you. You must lend me some of your clothes, any that you have, now, at
once. Will you do this?'
"My clothes!" he began to gasp.
"Yes. Go and get them, please. But make no noise, for the love of
Christ."
Vincent tip-toed back. He returned, after a time of dreadful rummaging
in the dark, with a bundle.
"I have brought what I could find. They are all there. I could not
bring what I put on every day, for many reasons. These are the best I
have. How will you--can you--? They are not easy to put on, I think,
for a girl."
Poor Vincent! Isoult had no time nor heed for the modesty proper to
lovers.
"I will manage," she said. "Turn round, please."
Vincent did as he was bid. He even shut his eyes. Presently Isoult
spoke again.
"Could you find me a pair of scissors, Vincent?" She had been quick to
learn that beauty must be obeyed. She would have asked Vincent for the
moon if she had happened to want it, and would have seen him depart on
the errand without qualm. Sure enough, he brought the scissors before
her held-out hand had grown tired.
"Cut off my hair," she said, "level with my shoulders."
"Your hair!" cried the poor lad. "Oh, Isoult, I dare not."
It reached her knees, was black as night, and straight as rain. It
might have echoed Vincent's reproach. But the mistress of both was
inexorable.
"Cut it to clear my shoulders, please."
He groaned, but remembered that there would be spoils, that he must
even touch this hedged young goddess. So as she stood, doubleted,
breeched, and in his long red hose, he hovered round her. Soon she was
lightened of her load of glory, and as spruce as a chamber-page.
"Now," she said, "you must tell me the way to the nearest shelter.
There is a place called St. Lucy's Precinct, I have heard. Where is
that?"
He told her. Keep straight away from the moon. It was just there: he
pointed with his hand. As long as the moon held she could not fail to
hit it. Beyond the pine-wood there was an open shaw; she could keep
through that, then cross a piece of common with bracken cut and
stacked. Afterwards came a very deep wood, full of beech-timber. You
crossed a brook at Four Mile Bottom,--you could hear the ripples of the
ford a half-mile away,--and held straight for the top of Galley Hill.
After that the trees began again, oaks mostly. A tall clump of firs
would lead you there. Beyond them was the yew-tree wood. The precinct
was there. But the moon was her best lamp. He was talking to her in
language which she understood better than he. She could never miss the
road now.
She thanked him. Then came a pause.
"I must go, Vincent," said she. "You have been my friend this night. I
will tell my lord when I see him. He will reward you better than I."
"He can never reward me!" cried Vincent.
She sighed and turned to go, but he started forward and held her with
both hands at her waist. She seemed so like a boy of his age, it gave
him courage.
"Isoult," he stammered, "Isoult!"
"Yes, Vincent," says she.
"Are you going indeed?"
"I must go at once."
"Shall I see you again?"
"Ah, I cannot tell you that."
"Do you care nothing?"
"I think you have been my friend. Yes, I should like to see you again,
some day."
"Oh, Isoult--"
"What?"
"Will you give me something?"
"What have I, Vincent? If I could you know that I would."
He had her yet by the waist. There was no blinking what he wanted.
Isoult stood.
"You may kiss me there," she said with the benignity of a princess, and
gave him her hand.
The boy's mouth was very near her cheek. Something--who knows
what?--checked him. He let go her waist, dropped on his knees and
kissed the hand, turned little prince in his turn. Isoult was as near
loving him then as she could ever be. This was no great way, perhaps,
but near enough for immediate purposes. When Vincent got up she gave
him her hand frankly to hold. They were two children now, and like two
children kissed each other without under-thought. Then, as she sped
away from the moon, Vincent crept back to his cold bed with an armful
of black hair.