MERCY WITH THE BEASTS
Isoult, so soon as she had seen the last of old Ursula, turned her face
to the south and the sun. She walked a mile through bush and bramble
with picked-up skirts; then she sat down and took off her scarlet shoes
and stockings, threw them aside, and went on with a lighter tread. Not
that she was above the glory of silk robes and red slippers, or
unconscious that they heightened the charm of her person--the old
woman's glass, the old woman's face had told her better than that.
Indeed, if she could have believed she would meet with Prosper at the
end of that day, she would have borne with them, hindrance or none. But
this was not to be. Her hair was yet a good six inches from her knees.
So now, bare-legged and bare-footed, her skirts pulled back and pinned
behind her, she felt the glad tune of the woods singing in her veins,
and ran against the stream of cool air deeper into the fountain-heart
whence it flowed, the great silence and shade of the forest. The path
showed barer, the stems more sparse, the roof above her denser. Soon
there was no more grass, neither any moss; nothing but mast and the
leaves of many autumns. Keeping always down the slope, and a little in
advance of the sun, by mid-day she had run clear of the beech forest
into places where there grew hornbeams, with one or two sapling oaks.
There was tall bracken here, and dewy grass again for her feet. She
rested herself, sat deep in shade listening to the murmur of bees in
the sunlight and the gentle complaining of wood-pigeons in the
tree-tops far toward the blue. She lay down luxuriously in the fern,
pillowed her cheek on her folded hands, closed her eyes, and let all
the forest peace fan her to happy dreaming. It was impossible to be ill
at ease in such a harbour. The alien faces and brawl of the town, the
grime, the sweat, the blows of the charcoal-burners, her secret life
there in the midst of them, the shame, the hooting and the stunning of
her last day at distant High March, Maulfry, Galors, leering Falve--all
these grim apparitions sank back into the green woodland vistas; all
the shocks and alarums of her timid little soul were subdued by the
rustling boughs and the crooning voices of the doves. She saw bright
country in her dreams. Prosper was abroad on a spurred horse; his
helmet gleamed in the sun; his enemies fell at his onset. The deer
browsed about her, from the branches a squirrel peeped down, the
woodbirds with kindly peering eyes hopped within reach of her cradled
arms. Soon, soon, soon, she should see him! She would be sitting at his
knees; her cheek would be on his breast, his arm hold her close, his
kind eyes read all her love story. What a reward for what a little
aching! She fell asleep in the fern and smiled at her own dreams. When
she awoke two girls sat sentinel beside her.
They were ruddy, handsome, cheerful girls, with scarcely a pin's point
of difference between them. They had brown eyes, brown loose hair, the
bloom of healthy blood on their skin. One was more fully formed, more
assured; perhaps she laughed rather less than the other; it was not
noticeable. Isoult, with sleepy eyes, regarded them languidly, half
awake. They sat on either side of her; each clasped a knee with her two
hands; both watched her. Then the elder with a little laugh shook her
hair back from her shoulders, stooped quickly forward, and kissed her.
Isoult sat up.
"Oh, who are you?" she wondered.
"I am Belvisée," said the kissing girl.
"I am Mellifont," said the laugher.
"Do you live here?"
"Yes."
"Is this Thornyhold?"
"Thornyhold Brush is very near."
"Will you take me? I am to wait there."
"Come, sister."
Belvisée helped her up by the hand. When she was afoot Mellifont caught
her other hand and kissed her in her turn--a glad and friendly little
embrace. Friends indeed they looked as they stood hand-linked in the
fern. All three were of a height, Isoult a shade shorter than the
sisters.
She contrasted her attire with theirs; her own so ceremonious, theirs,
what there was of it, simple in the extreme. A smock of coarse green
flax, cut at a slant, which left one shoulder and breast bare, was
looped on to the other shoulder, and caught at the waist by a leather
strap. It bagged over the belt, and below it fell to brush the knees.
Arms, legs, and feet were bare and brown. Visibly they wore nothing
else. Mellifont laughed to see the scrutiny.
"We must undress you," she said.
"Why?"
"You cannot run like that."
"No, that is quite true. But----"
"Oh," said Belvisée, "you are quite safe. No men come where the king
is."
"The king!"
"King of the herd."
"Ah, the deer are near by."
"All Thornhold is theirs. The great herd is here."
"Do you live with them?"
"Yes."
"And they feed you?"
"Yes."
"Ah," said Isoult, "then I shall be at peace till my lord comes, if
there are no men."
"Have you a lord, a lover?"
"Yes, he is my lord, and I love him dearly."
"We have none. What is your name?"
"I am called Isoult la Desirous."
"Because you are a lover?"
"Yes. I am a lover."
"I will never love a man," said Belvisée rather gravely. "All men are
cruel."
"I will never have a lover, nor be a lover, until men know what love
is," said Mellifont in her turn.
"And what is love, do you think?" Isoult asked her thrilling.
"Love! Love! It is service," said Belvisée.
"Service and giving," said Mellifont.
Isoult turned aside and kissed Mellifont's cheek.
They had reached the low ground, for they had been walking during this
colloquy. Oaks stood all about them, with bracken shoulder high. Into
this the three girls plunged, and held on till they were stopped by a
shallow brook. The sisters waded in, so did Isoult when she had picked
up her skirts and petticoats. After a little course up stream through
water joyfully cool they reached a place where the brook made a bend
round the roots of an enormous oak; turning this they opened on a pool
broad and deep.
"We will robe you here," said Belvisée, meaning rather to unrobe her.
The great gnarly roots of the oak were as pillars to a chamber which
ran far into the bank. Here the two girls undressed Isoult, and here
they folded and laid by her red silk gown. She became a pearly copy of
themselves in all but her hair. Her hair! They had never seen such
hair. Measuring it they found it almost to her knees.
"You cannot go with it loose," said they. "We must knot it up again;
but we will go first to the herd."
"Let us go now," added Mellifont on an impulse, and took Isoult by the
hand.
Crossing the brook below the pool, they climbed the bank and found
themselves in a sunny broad place. The light glanced in and out of the
slim grey trees. The bracken was thinner, the grass rich and dewy. Here
Isoult saw the great herd of red deer--hundreds of hundreds--hinds and
calves with some brockets and harts, busy feeding. Over all that
spacious glade the herd was spread out till there seemed no end to it.
A sentinel stag left feeding as they came on. He looked up for a
moment, stamped his foot, and went back to grass. One or two others
copied him; but mostly the three girls could go among them without
notice. Imperceptibly, however, the herd followed them feeding on their
way to the king, so that by the time they reached him there was a line
of deer behind them, and deer at either flank.
The great hart also stamped his foot and stood at gaze, with towering
antlers and dewy nostrils very wide. Before him Belvisée and Mellifont
let go of Isoult's hand: she was to make her entry alone. She put them
behind her back, hardly knowing what was expected of her, shrank a
little into herself and waited timidly. Slowly then the great hart
advanced before his peering courtiers, pacing on with nodding head and
horns. Exactly in front of Isoult he planted his forefeet, thence he
looked down from his height upon her. She had always loved the deer,
and was not now afraid; but she covered herself with her hair.
The king stag smelt her over, beginning at her feet. He snuffed for a
long time at the nape of her neck, blew in her hair so as to spray it
out like a fountain scattered to the wind; then he fell to licking her
cheek. She, made bold, put a hand and laid it on his mane. Shyly she
stood thus, waiting events. The great beast lifted his head high and
gave a loud bellow; all the deer chorused him; the forest rang. So
Isoult was made free of the herd.
Belvisée and Mellifont lay beside her on the grass. Isoult lay on her
face, while Mellifont coiled and knotted up her hair.
"If love is giving, and you are a lover, Isoult," said she, "you would
give your hair."
"I have given it," said Isoult, and told them her story as they all lay
there together.
"And to think that you have endured all this from men, and yet love a
man!" cried flushed Mellifont, when she had made an end.
But Isoult smiled wisely at her.
"Ah, Mellifont," she said, "the more you saw of men, the more you would
find to love in him."
"Indeed, I should do no such thing," said Mellifont, firing up again.
"You could not help it. Everyone must love him."
"That might not suit you, Isoult," said Belvisée.
"Why should it not? Would it prevent my love to know him loved? I
should love him all the more."
"Hark!" cried Mellifont on a sudden. She laid her ear to the ground,
then jumped to her feet.
"Come to the herd, come to the herd," she whispered.
Belvisée was on her feet also in a trice. Both girls were hot and
bright.
"What disturbs you?" asked Isoult, who had heard nothing.
"Horsemen! quick, quick." They all ran between the trees to regain the
deer. Isoult could hear no horses; but the sisters had, and now she saw
that the deer had. Every head was up, every ear still, every nostril on
the stretch. Listening now intently, faint and far she did hear a
muffled knocking--it was like a beating heart, she thought. Whatever it
was, the deer guessed an enemy. Upon a sudden stamp, the whole herd was
in motion. Led by the hart-royal, they trotted noiselessly down the
wood, till in the thick fern they lay still. The girls lay down with
them.
The sound gained rapidly upon them. Soon they heard the crackling of
twigs, then the swish of swept brushwood, then the creaking of girths.
Isoult hid her face, lying prone on her breast.
Galors and his men came thundering through the wood. Their horses were
reeking, dripping from the flanks. The riders, four of them, looking
neither right nor left, past over the open ground, where a few minutes
before she whom they desperately sought had been lying at their mercy.
But Galors, fled by all things living in Morgraunt, scourged on like a
destroying wind and was gone. Isoult little knew how near she had been
to the unclean thing. If she had seen him she would have run straight
to him without a thought, for he bore the red feathers in his helmet,
and behind him, on the shield, danced in the glory of new gilt the
_fesse dancettée_.
It may be doubted if the instincts of the earth-born can ever pierce
the trappings of a knight-at-arms. They trust in emotions which such
gear is designed to hide or transfigure. Isoult, observe, had caught
Prosper out of his harness, when before the face of the sky she had
thrilled him to pity. But when once he had stooped to her, for the very
fact, she made haste to set him up on high in her heart, and in more
seemly guise. There and thenceforward he stood on his pedestal figured,
not as a pitiful saviour (whom a girl must be taught to worship), but
as an armed god who suffered her homage. She was no better (or no
worse, if you will) than the rest of her sex in this, that she loved to
love, and was bewildered to be loved. So she would never get him out of
armour again. Her god might not stoop.