The dryad a novel
"Then get on your feet again," said Argathona, gently, and she reached
out her hands to his, extended, and lifted him up standing as easily
as if he had been a baby; and at the touch of her fingers Simon felt
instantly that his blood was running anew and that the chill which
gripped at his heart dissolved before the flame of life revived. He
made to stretch his stiff arms, and found to his joy that he succeeded.
He moved his legs this way and that with a painful relish in their
obedience. It was good to find himself still all of a piece.
"Ah," he sighed, "how stiff I be! It is tedious to feel like a tree."
Argathona's brows knitted slightly, and Simon saw that he had bungled,
and tried to gloss his blunder. He had no doubt now as to his
companion's powers if he still questioned her narrative, and he thought
it well to show respect to her alleged sylvan kinship.
"Of course, there are trees and trees--" he began to stammer, but the
dryad with a whisk of her myrtle twig warned him to keep his peace,
and he shut his mouth tightly. She sat comfortably down upon the turf,
crossing her legs under her as a lad might, and motioned to him to take
his ease. Simon gingerly lowered himself to the ground with his chin
in his hand. He was not a little afraid of the amazing maid, for which
he was scarcely to be blamed; but he was also heartily her admirer, for
which he was wholly to be commended. She stared at him and smiled, and
Simon stared at her and rubbed his head wistfully.
"Here is a wonder out of a wood," he said. "May the devil fly away with
me if I know what to make of you."
"There is nothing to wonder at," Argathona answered, gravely. "I
belong to the old, strong race, the kin of the gods, and the strength
of the gods runs in my body though my sire was a mortal man. Also I
know something of the secrets of the ancient wood. Otherwise I am like
yourself, thinking the same thoughts, living the same life, sharing the
same pleasures of hunger and thirst, sleep and waking, and the change
of the seasons. The only difference is that there will come a time when
none of these things can live for you, and that time will never come
for me. I shall go on with the dawn and the sunset and the wheeling
stars and the changing seasons and the perpetual years."
"The difference is a pretty big one," Simon grunted; "but let that
pass."
He looked at the girl curiously; he was now quite prepared to be
devoted to her, though he was also quite prepared to believe her a
witch. There were witches and witches, and this seemed an honest
one. But her claim to endless existence bewildered him. He admitted
to himself that it would sound very pleasant if applied to his own
case. It must be agreeable, he thought, to go on cheerfully eating and
drinking and making love, and fighting and sleeping and gaming and
riding a-horseback and experiencing all the other enjoyable processes
appertaining to a strong man's life, day in and day out, year in and
year out through the centuries, with never any fear of finding wine and
love and pastime uninteresting or condemned to end. At least, the maid
was not making game of him; she was fixed in her strange story; and,
anyway, he was pledged her friend.
"There is one thing that puzzles me," he said, bluntly--"how does it
happen that you, who have lived in this wood since your old friends
the gods decamped from paradise, and who talk, as I should think, the
jargon of ancient days, can converse with me, who remember no more than
thirty summers and was born over-seas in France?"
Argathona smiled amiably at his quandary.
"It is given to us," she said, "who are kindred with the gods, to say
in our speech the thoughts of all men, and to understand with our
ears the thoughts of all men. When you speak I hear your meaning in
the words of the woodland, and when I speak to you my meaning takes
possession of you and you shape it for yourself into the usage of your
familiar speech, and so it will be for me always, wherever I go."
Simon nodded. If this were so he could understand that something in her
utterance which seemed alien and quaint to him. Here truly was a gift
scarcely less enviable than the grace of perdurable life. Argathona
interrupted his meditations.
"You have asked me many questions," she said, looking straightly at him
from under level brows; "now answer some for me. Is it the manner of
mortal man to make love in your fashion?"
Simon looked awkward and fumbled with his beard.
"There are many ways of making love," he confessed. "Some are more
formal," he admitted, after a moment's pause.
The nymph looked thoughtful.
"Such would please me better," she said. She eyed Simon circumspectly,
then questioned, suddenly, "Why do you carry that lantern?"
Simon unhooked it from his girdle and held it at arm's-length, a
formidable piece of furniture for a traveller.
"There was some fellow of old time did the like for my reason--looking
for an honest man or an honest woman."
The dryad smiled at memories.
"I have heard of that; it was a mad Athenian called Diogenes."
"I care not what his name was," said Simon, "but I like his humor and
I follow his quest. Not that the lantern is of much use to me in the
daytime, but it shows my good faith."
"Have you found no honest folk?" Argathona asked, sympathetically.
Simon shook his red head.
"Never since I came to these regions of Greece," Simon protested.
"There were honest folk in Rouen, or, at least, I used to think so.
Alain, the armorer, he was an honest man. He made this blade," and
Simon patted the stout sword at his side. "I never met with a better.
But since I came to Corinth to serve the duke I have found no honest
soul or body."
Argathona gave a little shiver.
"I am glad that I dwell here in the greenwood, and not with your clan."
Simon rambled on with his narrative.
"When I came to these parts I still had the bulk of a pretty little
patrimony. Where is it now? Every light o' love in Corinth has filched
her bit of it; every cozener with the dice has picked his share. While
I was rich my friends fawned on me; when I fell poor they turned their
backs, lads and lassies. I have written some rhymes on my misfortune."
He paused, hoping that the maid might ask to hear them, but as she did
no such thing he resumed, plaintively:
"So now I trample this planet seeking an honest human."
"Do you hope to find such in Athens?" Argathona asked.
She was quite interested in this queer, russet-colored man, with his
wild words and his wild wits--as interested as she would be if she came
upon some new kind of fawn or unfamiliar moth in the forest. Simon
grunted uncertainly.
"I have my doubts," he said, "though every great lord and every little
lord in Attica will be there. But I do not go to Athens solely to that
end. I hope to find service with the Duke of Athens, who loves, so they
tell me, such stout fellows as I be."
He stretched his great arms apart as he spoke, in pride at their mighty
muscles. Then, remembering how little their strength had availed him
against the witchery of the nymph, he grinned a thought sheepishly. But
Argathona was honestly admiring his force, and only pitying him for not
being comely. They sat for a moment looking at each other, thinking
their own thoughts. About them all was very still in the moonlight,
silence only troubled by the wheeling of bats and the droning of
insects. Suddenly from the distance came loud shouts, furious cries,
and then the angry clash of steel on steel and the clattering of a
horse's hoofs in furious flight.
IV
THE MYSTIC ROSE
The young prince lay in the shadow while his horse cropped at the fresh
grass, and he read the _Romance of the Rose_, and as he read it seemed
as if he, too, lay there dreaming with the dreamer, and that all the
amazing pageant of the tale moved before him as the figures on the
woven arras of a great room move, stirred by the wind. For he, like the
teller of the tale, seemed to wake from sleep on a May morning and to
stray into the meadows to hearken to the matins of the birds. Like the
dreamer, he wandered over flower-starred fields beside a river broader
and shallower than the Seine till he came to the garden and the castle
whose walls were adorned in gold and colors with the hideous images
of Hate, Felony, Villany, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Eld,
Hypocrisy, and Poverty; and it seemed to him that after he had sated
his awed fancy with the study of those strange devices, he, too, sought
if by any means he might get into the garden. Then in this waking sleep
he found at last a small wicket, and he smote thereon, and the gate was
opened to him by a damsel who told him that her name was Idleness, and
that she was the friend of the master of the castle and garden, whose
name was Mirth, and she gleefully bade him enter, and he obeyed and
found himself straightway in so fair a garden that he deemed himself to
have arrived at the earthly paradise. His dream spirit, following fast
on the dainty heels of Idleness, came to where apple-faced Mirth and
his jolly company, fair men and fair women, entertained themselves with
song and dance.
But while he was with that genial congress and sharing in their sports,
the God of Love came over the grass with Sweet-Looking by his side, and
Sweet-Looking carried two bows, one crooked and knotty, the other even
and comely, and two quivers, each holding five arrows, and the arrows
in the quiver in the right hand were Beauty, Simplesse, Franchise,
Company, and Fair-Semblance, and those in the left hand were the arrows
of Pride, Villany, Shame, Wanhope, and New-Thought. Then the dreamer
fled away from these presences, and as he went the God of Love dogged
his footsteps with the fair bow and the fair arrow in his hand, and the
dreamer came to that clear fountain where Narcissus drowned himself
for self-love. In the waters of this fountain the dreamer beheld the
reflection of a rose-bush all on fire with roses, and the desire of
that rose-bush filled his heart so hotly that he would not have parted
with one bud thereof, might he hope to gain so much, for the city of
Paris or the city of Pavia. And while he hungered for the rose, the
God of Love came up with him and pierced him with the five arrows of
Beauty and Simplesse and Franchise and Company and Fair-Semblance, and
with each wound he became more and more Love's servant and vassal, and
then Love locked his heart with a golden key and left him with but one
desire in that shut heart, the desire to obtain the noble rose.
And so in his dream the youth pursued his adventure till he came to
where the rose-bush flourished and found it guarded by all manner of
evil passions, who grinned defiance at him and knotted their gnarled
hands to make a barrier to hold him from the lovely, lonely rose. And
even as he despaired of success Queen Venus came to his aid--Venus
with roses in her hair and roses at her feet, a beautiful, alluring
presence, and cheered him with sweet smiles and urged him with sweet
words to complete the achievement of the rose. Line by line and page
by page the story of the wonderful book seemed to tell itself over in
living pictures to his dreaming eyes, and the gracious women with the
gracious names courtesied to him and kissed their pink finger-tips, and
the evil faces mowed at him, and behind and beyond the fair faces and
the foul he could see the glorious flower that he longed for. And he
thought that Venus led him by the hand till he was close to the flower,
and gave him leave to kiss it, and he stooped and kissed the rose, and
his blood ran fire and his spirit was sanctified.
Then, with a shiver, Rainouart woke, and realized that he was lying