The dryad a novel
alone by the highway to Athens, and that the day had darkened and
the shadows were falling, and that his horse was fretting impatiently
at his tether, and that the book had fallen from his relaxed fingers,
and that he was very much alone on the earth. And he wished with all
his unblemished soul that he could slip from the world he lived in,
from the world where he loved no woman, into that kingdom of dreams,
and achieve through all impediments and obstacles the love of his
unknown lady. Wishing thus with a deep sigh, and realizing the vanity
of the wish with a deeper, he thrust the book back into his bosom,
and unfastened his horse and mounted him and turned his head towards
Athens, letting him go at his own gait. Muffled in his melancholy
musings, he suffered the bridle to drop on his horse's neck and rode
with folded arms, meditating upon the power of poesy, and wondering
if it were truly well for him that it had pleased Heaven to make his
spirit so unhappily different from the spirits of the light-hearted
knights of his father's court, who loved and were content, or who loved
and were discontent, but who were always blithe of spirit and seemed to
ask nothing better of fortune.
As he thus jogged and mused, trusting to his horse to find its way
to the city, suddenly from the shadow of the trees that bordered the
white highway came leaping from either side menacing figures, and the
dusk was troubled with the gleam of naked steel. And then, before the
prince could realize what had happened, his horse gave a great scream
of pain, for one of the skulkers had wounded the animal in the side,
aiming to hamstring it, and missing his mark in the dusk and flurry.
The horse reared, and the prince, taken unawares, lost his stirrups.
But Rainouart was too skilful a rider to be thrown, for instinctively
he gripped the sides of his horse with his thighs and caught at the
crupper, and if he had chosen could have escaped from his assailants
easily enough astride of the galloping steed. But it was not in him
to avoid danger thus or to fly from any odds; so, leaning forward, he
caught on the bridle and brought the frightened animal to a moment's
stand-still, and then deftly swinging himself from the saddle alighted
on his feet on the highway. In another moment his sword was out to meet
the swords of his antagonists, who rushed on him, a hurly-burly of
shouts and swords, and the quiet of the night was broken by the fierce
clash of steel on steel and the thundering of the frightened horse's
hoofs as he sped along the highway towards Athens.
V
THE SONG OF THE FOREST
When the noise of the clash of steel and the clatter of flying hoofs
echoed through the greenwood, Argathona leaped to her feet and the warm
color fled from her face. Simon, flatling on the grass, indifferent
to a noise the cause whereof was shrewdly guessed by him, thought the
girl more than ever akin in her pallor to those old stone statues he
had lightly noticed in that garden of pleasure in Byzantium. At that
time he decided easily that the living women who served his squandering
humor in that garden were much more fair than those ladies of old time
whom the unknown sculptor had hoped to commemorate. Now rolling the
problem over carefully through somewhat sluggish processes of thought,
he began to hold it little less than reasonable to change his mind.
"What is the matter?" the dryad cried, pressing her hands against her
breasts and widening her eyes, catlike, as she peered through the moony
gloom of the wood. Her attitude in her companion's eyes was that of a
wild creature troubled, and alert to pounce.
Simon rolled lazily on the grass and gave a self-satisfied snigger.
"I met a loon by the highway at the edge of the forest poring on a
foolish book, and his folly vexed me. Then I 'countered a covey of
thieves in the thick of the trees and told them of my blockhead coming.
From what we hear I take it that he has fallen into their fingers.
Belike they are cutting his throat at this present."
He chuckled at the ugly thought. Argathona turned upon him a pale, set
face and blazing eyes of rage.
"You will not suffer this!" she cried, indignant; "you are a strong
man."
Simon laughed again, a fat laugh, and aired his cynical philosophy.
"Marry, will I!" he answered. "Every man oaf that kills another man oaf
rids me the world of one pestilent fellow, and gives an honest man more
elbow-room."
Simon had angered the dryad much before, but now he angered her more.
Probably he had never heard of Medusa or he might have believed that
he beheld her. Argathona's adorable face was terrible to behold in its
wrath, and her tresses in the moonlight gleamed like golden serpents.
The scorn in her eyes might well have scared his bulk to stone.
"Oh, you are hateful, you humans," she protested, with hands uplifted
to heaven; and then she shrilled in a voice there was no resisting,
"Run to his help."
Very reluctantly, for his tumble still irked him, Simon found himself
obediently scrambling to his feet. The moment he stood erect Argathona
clutched hold of his right hand with her left, and in another instant
she had started to run in the direction from which the clangor came.
Simon would have liked to resist, but he might have liked equally well
to be proclaimed emperor of the East for any self-satisfactory result
his wishes were likely to have. His strong right hand was a helpless
prisoner in the grip of the girl's white fingers, and his limbs seemed
only to obey the volition communicated to them by her swift pulses.
Whether he liked it or whether he did not--and indeed he knew very
well that he did not--he was scampering at the top of his speed beside
the smoothly running maiden. Oh, the appalling rapidity of that race
through the forest! Simon, for all his bulk, had ever been counted
swift of foot among his fellows, but he had never known till that
moment what it truly meant to move swiftly. His hand captured in the
irresistible grasp of Argathona, the big man bounded along through the
alleys and over the glades of the forest trying to keep pace shoulder
to shoulder with the flying maid. It was like being tied to the tail of
a comet and careering through space; or, rather, it reminded Simon's
homely fancy of a dog he had once seen tied to a farmer's wagon when
the farmer's horse had bolted, covering ground in reluctant hurry with
trailing paws and tail. It seemed to him as if his legs no longer
touched the firm earth, but floated behind him foolishly, swimming in
the air, while his companion swept quicker than the wind through the
interminable avenues of the wood. That frenzied flight was like the
worst part of an ill dream, but it was an ill reality, and Simon's bulk
suffered wofully. His heart was strained like a swollen wine-skin, the
sweat rained from his aching body, there was not so much breath left
in his lungs as would blow a single hair from the beard of a seeding
dandelion; it was death in life to travel at that pace. After what
seemed to Simon an eternity of breakneck journeying, they swept into
a clearing of the forest fringed at the foot by the white highway. In
that clearing, as in a theatre, Simon saw a youth with his back to a
tree engaged gallantly in steel-play against a group of dusky figures
that came at him by rushes and fell off again before the steady sweep
of his long sword. Simon's breath and senses came back to him like a
trick. He saw that the man so vehemently attacked and so shamefully
outnumbered was defending himself valiantly, and he thought better of
bookworms from that instant. As he watched the craft of single man
against many, the assailants gave ground, and one of their number fell
to the earth like a log and lay there loggish. The man attacked had a
breathing span, and waited watchful with his weapon poised.
"Go to his aid," the wood-nymph whispered in Simon's ear, pointing to
the man who was fighting for his life.
Simon shook his head doggedly, thinking of the rules of his
misanthropic game. He had made up his mind to dislike mankind and
womankind, and it seemed a declination from principle to help any one
in peril of a paltry life.
"He would not thank me," he grumbled; "he is holding his own well
enough."
Even as he spoke, however, the conditions of the struggle were suddenly
altered. Again the robbers had made to rush the youth, again they
had retreated, and this time the youth, quitting the bastion of his
tree-trunk, charged his retreating foes, who fled swiftly before
him hither and thither. In making this attack he left at his rear,
unheeding, the man who had fallen, and this one, suddenly quickening
from his seeming lethargy, rose to his feet directly behind the
advancing knight, and struck at close quarters a murderous blow at
his head with what seemed to be a short club or mace. The youth gave
a groan and reeled as he turned and tried to face this unexpected
onslaught, and instantly all his enemies came swarming at him again.
"Will you not help him?" Argathona cried, in fine scorn. "Then I will."
A fallen tree-trunk lay in their way; the dryad leaped upon it just as
the harassed youth, stumbling under a second treacherous blow, tripped
and fell, and the robbers came swooping from all quarters upon their
quarry to despatch him. Argathona flung up her arms.
"Help me, help, ye forest powers," she cried, in a great voice that
seemed to Simon to fill the four corners of the world.
At the awful sound the startled robbers turned from their victim and
stared in terror at the white figure perched upon the stricken tree.
Simon to that moment had noted no signs of rising storm, though it
was no news to his experience that storms rise and fall swiftly in
the land of Greece. But on that instant it seemed to him and to the
confounded robbers that a fierce wind came roaring through the forest
while a black cloud like a dragon swallowed the moon at one bite,
drowning the wood with intolerable darkness, ripped at swift intervals
with zigzags of lightning, blindingly bright. Furious volleys of
thunder rolled through the blended terror of light and darkness, and
the clamor of heaven was horribly mimicked on earth by a bellowing as
of innumerable wild beasts, fierce citizens of the forest, disturbed
in their slumbers by the sudden hubbub. Simon, frankly frightened,
fell on his knees and tried to stammer a prayer, while the robbers,
utterly discomfited, shrieked their fears, and turning from that figure
standing preternaturally white against the blackness, fled for their
rascal lives. It appeared to Simon as he knelt that the dryad high
above him chanted a wild imprecation upon the fugitives which rang thus:
Chase them, wolves, but do not slay;
Scare them, snakes, but do not sting;
Glow-worms, guide the rogues astray;
Hedgehogs, trip them as they spring
Helter-skelter through the night,
Dumb and deaf and blind with fright.
Though Simon deemed it an age-long time before the last sound of flying
feet died away and the last words of the wood-nymph's imprecation faded
into silence, yet the storm died with a suddenness only equalled by
its birth. The thunder ceased to rumble, the lightning ceased to fly,
the great, black dragon of cloud fell asunder dissipated into a myriad
vanishing fragments, and in a quiet sky the sweet moon shone supreme
again, filling the glade with brilliance. Simon staggered to his feet
and made an end of his paternosters.
"That was a very pretty piece of work," he stammered, wiping the beads
of sweat from his wet forehead as he turned to address the wood-nymph.
The remark was intended to be a compliment, but it proved a soliloquy,