The dryad a novel
golden flagon and a golden cup. Esclaramonde took the cup and held it
while Bohemond poured out red wine that glowed like dragon's blood in
the moonlight. Then a gesture dismissed the page to his companions,
and the duchess set the golden cup upon the grass. She was still
supporting Rainouart with one arm, his eyes were closed, and his lips
had lost their color. From the jewelled pouch that hung at her girdle
the duchess drew with her free hand a tiny phial, and, cuddling it in
her palm, drew the stopper with her finger and thumb. She poured the
contents into the cup and thrust the empty phial back into her pouch.
Then she lifted the cup and pressed it to the young man's pale lips.
"Drink, my lord, drink," she entreated, and her voice could implore and
command with the same breath and charm the listener away from reason.
She was eager that he should drink, for she knew that what he drank
would make him sleep sound, and that when he woke he must needs think
as she would have him think, and so she said again:
"Drink, my lord, drink."
Rainouart opened his eyes wearily and looked up. He had hoped that he
might sleep, and, waking, find the coming of the duchess a fever's
fantasy. But she was still with him, his imperial deliverer, and the
white child only the picture of a dream. Esclaramonde tilted the cup a
little at his lips, and he drank at it eagerly, sucking in surcease of
memory, sucking in unconquerable sleep. It was delicious, that draught
of dark and deep oblivion; the tired senses relaxed.
"I thank you, lady," he sighed, in relief, and then all knowledge
slipped from him and he lay his length unconscious. The duchess called
to her page, and Bohemond raced across the grass to her side. Him the
duchess commanded:
"Let two of my people carry this lord to my litter. We will make sure
of his safe convoy to Athens. I will ride for the rest of the journey."
Her orders were swiftly and instantly obeyed. Three tall fellows of her
men-at-arms, picked by the knight who led the van of her escort, came
to where Rainouart lay and carried him as easily and as gently as if he
had been a sleeping child to their lady's litter. A servitor moved from
the rear of the little army leading a white riding palfrey, valiantly
caparisoned. As she made to mount she paused, missing something, and
her quick eyes sought for Simon.
"Where is the braggart we talked with but now?" she asked, sharply,
and her question proved hard to answer. The men-at-arms into whose
charge Simon had been put looked at one another with dismay, for truly
Simon had disappeared. The disappearance, very surprising to the
soldiery, was not very surprising in itself. The fact of the matter
was that Simon had decided some time back that it would be excellent
well for him to be quite clear of the complication that the coming
of the duchess had created. It was plain to the adventurer that the
duchess had taken a fancy for the heir of Athens. It was also patent
to his understanding that he himself existed an undesirable witness
of that earlier passage between Rainouart and the woman of the wood,
the story of which the duchess had so vehemently resented. Simon, who
had something of the art of reading women's natures in their faces,
imagined, not unwisely, that the Duchess of Thebes was not a woman
to stick at much if the removal of a disagreeable witness might be
convenient to her. Once Simon had made up his mind that it were well
for him to go, he lost no time in making the experiment.
It was no very difficult enterprise. The men in whose custody he
stood, occupied to their greater interest in watching the duchess's
attentions to the wounded knight, though they could see little and hear
less, paid scant heed to Simon, who, on his side, had done nothing
to provoke watchfulness by any resistance to their guardianship. So,
finding them thus indifferent, little by little he edged him away from
their neighborhood, moving very cautiously and gradually as one who
scarcely seemed to move at all till he backed against a tree, against
which he leaned lazily for some seconds. Once in front of a tree it
was but simple strategy to slip to the other side of its trunk, and
this feat Simon, choosing his time wisely, accomplished dexterously
and unnoticed. Had he been by misluck interrupted in his progress,
he relied upon his mighty strength to overthrow any six who sought
to restrain him, and to make a bolt for it into the thickness of the
wood where he believed he might effectually evade pursuit. But he
wished, if it might be, to glide away in quiet, and fortune favored the
adventurer. A floating fleece of cloud, stray fragment of the shattered
dragon that seemed to obey Argathona's incantation, had again muffled
the moonlight. In the gloom Simon was on his hands and knees in the
brushwood and threading his way on all-fours with amazing celerity
among the trees into the deep of the forest. Thus it came to pass that
when the duchess demanded Simon, Simon was not forthcoming.
"He was here a moment since," one man-at-arms asserted, lying hardily,
as he stared into the vacant faces of his fellows.
"Belike he has slipped into the wood," another suggested, shading his
eyes with his hands and peering into the impenetrable gloom behind him.
"Shall we search for him with torches?" Bohemond proposed, briskly,
while the men-at-arms looked sheepish over their blunder and wished
Simon at the devil. The duchess shook her head impatiently.
"No, it is no matter," she said.
She believed that she would recognize the man again if she saw him
in Athens. She was confident, too, that the man could have little
power, even if he had the inclination, to interfere with her plans.
The immediate need was to carry Rainouart quickly to Athens and there
to work her will upon his troubled wits. She mounted lightly into the
saddle of her horse, her spirits were nimble, her heart gay, her brain
elated. She had taken at last a prize that she had long desired, a
prize that she would not lightly yield again. All was very well with
her.
"Onward!" she commanded, "onward! Athens, ho!" So she and her company
resumed their measured journey to Athens, a line of torches on the
white highway, while the prince slept a dreamless sleep on the litter
still warm with the pressure of the limbs of Esclaramonde.
X
SIMON BLOWS OUT HIS LANTERN
When Simon had made some little way into the wood he quitted the animal
all-fours, irksome to one already stiff and weary, for the natural
carriage of man, and made to think things over and to look about him.
The latter was difficult to do, at least to any great advantage. More
frequent clouds now scumbled the sky and huddled in dull clumps between
moon and earth, wherefore in the dense wood the darkness was so thick
that Simon felt as if he could pluck pieces out of it as out of a
palpable pall or curtain. But Simon was not discomfited, Simon was
not at a loss. "Here," he murmured, sagaciously, "comes in the wisdom
of your philosophic lantern." Squatting cautiously in the darkness,
after assuring himself by preliminary pattings of the absence of any
hostile snags, he fumbled in his pouch till he found flint, steel, and
tinder-box. Then after the habitual preliminary pains and failures that
darkened the lives of those that sought illumination, he succeeded in
getting a light and applying it gingerly to the candle in its iron
house. When the wick began to burn freely he hasped the door and
felt less lonely and astray. Through the thin plates of horn a pale
yellow light flowed dimly, showing like some civic lamp of fish-oil
seen through a fog. But it was at least bright enough to enable Simon
to distinguish where he was for a few paces in any direction, and
to protect himself when he started walking again from crashing with
unnecessary vehemence into unexpected tree-trunks. What was less to
the purpose was that the flickering wick seemed to stir from slumber
all manner of moths and midges, which hustled in their myriads about
lantern and lantern-carrier with a wholly unnecessary activity. But if
their attentions called for a brave display of philosophy, this was all
in the part of one who carried the lantern of Diogenes.
Having looked about him, Simon now proceeded to think things over. All
the events that had followed upon the unexpected arrival of the duchess
had passed so swiftly that he knew they had taken little time in the
happening. He had not the least idea where he was or what he should do
next. He wanted, in the second place, the road to Athens, but he did
not know where to find it; also he wanted in the first place to see
the woodland maid again, but he did not know where to find her. He was
still more than three-quarters inclined to think her mad. A lonely life
in the forest had no doubt unhinged her pretty wits, and led her to
credit all sorts of gossamer nonsense about immortality and forgotten
gods. But were she the maddest witch that ever straddled a broomstick
she was as fair as fair, and it occurred to the lantern-carrier
hopefully that perhaps now that her prince was thus beraped from
her she might be more willing to let Master Simon from Corinth play
lieutenant.
After a while he decided that the best thing for him to do was to
try to find his way back to the glade whence young Athens had been
carried, for thither the wood-maid was sure to come with the healing
herbs for her lover, and Simon's strongest purpose was the wish to see
her again. He groped his way slowly through the trees, oathing free
at sundry awkward bumps and stumbles, and endeavoring painfully to
retrace his steps over a soil that gave no indication of his passage.
But he moved with fair confidence served by occasional glimpses of the
moon, and sure that by this time the duchess would have vanished from
the goal at which he aimed. Fortune rewarded him. He had not travelled
very far when he caught a glimpse of a clearing through the trees, and
hastening his speed he soon broke from the wood and found that he had,
indeed, returned to the scene of the night's adventure. Here was the
glade newly trampled with the coming and going of many feet, here were
the marks of horses' hoofs on the grass, here was the slight hollow in
the turf where the youth's body had lain. The place seemed strangely
deserted now which had so short a while before been populous. Surely
the girl would come soon, Simon thought. He lowered his lantern to the
ground and humped himself beside it, resolved on waiting, and wishing
he had a store of food and drink with him to cheer the waiting-time.
He had not long to wait. There came a gleam of whiteness through the
trees, the gleam of a white body garmented in white stuff. Another
moment and Argathona emerged from the forest and came running across
the grass towards him. She was holding the skirts of her smock in both
hands to form a kind of sack, and in this sack she carried herbs. As
she came near to Simon she shook what she carried in a heap upon the
sward and leaped forward to where her lover had lain. Then she gave a
great cry as she saw that Simon sat there alone.
"Where is he?" she asked, an agony in her voice.
Simon was glad to see the girl again, but sorely against his will he
found himself a sharer in her sorrow, and could almost have wished
young Athens back again between them to conjure away the pathos of her
look. He rose up to answer her, honestly sorry for her flagrant sorrow,
painfully conscious that it was not for him to bring her consolation.
"Gone," he said, simply. It was all he could find to say on the
instant; it really seemed all there was to say.
"Gone!" she echoed, and it seemed to Simon as if the woes of all