The dryad a novel
for he found that he stood and spoke alone. Argathona had already
quitted the tree-trunk and skimmed across the intervening grass to
the field of battle. She was now bending over the wounded man. Simon
followed her as quickly as he could, fearful of his own black shadow as
it trailed raggedly in the moonlight. When he reached her side Simon,
bending by her, peered into the rigid face of the fallen fighter. The
man was, indeed, his book-reading knight of the afternoon, who lay now
very still and pale in the moonlight with his eyes shut, and there was
blood upon his bright hair and blood upon his colored coat. The dryad
looked up imploringly at Simon with clasped hands and face strained
with sorrow.
"The beautiful boy!" she sighed. "What have they done to him? I hope
he is not dead. Tell me, you who are human and should understand your
kind."
Simon stooped closer over the body and examined it dexterously enough.
In the rough-and-tumble of his life he had had plenty of experience of
wounds, and knew what to do. The heart was beating satisfactorily, and
Simon nodded approval.
"Have you never seen death before?" he asked of his companion, while
his big paws began to search more gently than seemed natural to them
for the man's wounds.
Argathona wrung her hands.
"Never of human creature," she wailed; "but I still weep for the forest
creatures, the beasts and the birds and the insects who seem so happy
in their little lives."
By this time Simon had plucked open the knight's coat, and his fingers
travelled dexterously over flesh that seemed womanly white and smooth
in the moonlight.
"You are mighty compassionate," he grunted.
Argathona gave him a glance of pathetic reproval.
"I should be, being immortal," she answered, with a girlish dignity
which was quaint in such a case.
Simon nodded silently. He had forgotten the girl's claim to
immortality, but he was now very sure that she was a witch and her
words did not worry him. Patiently he finished his examination of the
body. A stroke aimed at the side had slipped on a buckle, causing
only a gash where a hole had been hoped for. The loss of blood was not
enough to account for the knight's helpless condition. Simon lifted
him carefully to one side and then saw the cause of unconsciousness.
The murderous blow that had been struck at the back of the knight's
head had been struck at close quarters, and struck to kill. It had come
pretty near to carry out its purpose, if the striking arm had been
stronger.
Simon turned an encouraging countenance to the girl's grave face.
"Your knightling is not dead nor in great danger of death, though he
has a nasty nick in the side that had better be bunged."
As he spoke he tore away a great piece of the youth's shirt and laid
bare his side while he twisted the linen to shape a bandage.
"The worst of his business is that crack at the back of the head which
has knocked him silly. It were well if we had some water."
"Let me do that," Argathona ordered, pointing to his employment. "I
know how to stanch wounds. I saved the life of a stag lately that
Alcibiades had wounded. Run you to the spring in the forest and bring
me water."
When Argathona commanded in Argathona's woodland, Simon felt that it
was for him to obey without question.
"Where is the spring?" he asked, as he rose to his feet.
Argathona drew from her girdle the myrtle-bough that she had thrust
there when they began their wild race through the forest.
"Hold this so in your hand," she showed him, "and go straightly
moonward, pressing it lightly between your palms. When it begins to
quiver and twirl in your fingers you will know that you are near the
spring. It is but a little way from here."
Simon had heard ere this of such ways of finding water, though in his
country folk did the business rather with witch-hazel than myrtle; yet
he had little doubt but that Argathona knew her woodland ways, and he
took the bough from her hands and made at the top of his speed for the
forest.
VI
LIKE UNTO ADONIS
Argathona, bending on one knee over the wounded man, lifted his
shoulders with firm, supple fingers upon the other knee, and, tenderly
supporting the bruised head with one hand, breathed quickly and
repeatedly upon his parted lips. The breath of those who are deathless
can fan the dying flame of the lamp of life till it burns again
serenely. As she worked thus, tending a mortal man for the first time,
touching the curling young head and the smooth young skin, unwonted
tremors stirred her and unwonted fancies fumed. "If it were not for
the red blood," she thought, "surely this youth might be of kin with
the immortal gods. Adonis must have looked so when he lay with his
life-blood dabbling the brake and reddening the petals of the roses,
and widowed Aphrodite wept."
There were tears in Argathona's eyes as she thought thus, and they
fell warm upon the cold face and kindled color in it, for the tears of
those that are deathless quicken the flesh as the rains from heaven
quicken the earth. After a little the youth opened his eyes and looked
up in wonder at the beautiful, sad face that compassionated him, the
beautiful body that neighbored him.
"Who are you?" he asked, faintly, wondering where he was, for his wits
were still wool-gathering, and wondering why his voice sounded so weak
and foolish to him, as voices sometimes sound in dreams.
"I am--" Argathona began, and faltered. She thought that she would not
again tell a stranger the truth about herself and be doubted, as Simon
had doubted her, so she changed her purpose a little and went on:
"I am a woman, and I live in this wood."
Rainouart struggled somewhat to get up, for it vexed his strength
exceedingly to feel helpless and it fretted his courtesy to trouble a
woman with such care of him. But Argathona gently laid a hand upon his
breast, and for all his strength he could not resist that pressure, and
she kept him pillowed on her knee. He put a hand that seemed unusually
clumsy to his aching head, and then stared in amazement at his naked
chest and weakly strove to claw his coat together. Argathona whispered
to him very softly, and he understood her without marvelling, being
unable for the moment to marvel at anything.
"Robbers set on you--wounded you."
Again Rainouart struggled to rise.
"Now I remember," he said, fiercely; and looking about him, though it
hurt him much to move his head, he saw how his sword lay on the grass
a-nigh him, and he made a grab for the weapon. But Argathona put her
beautiful, strong arms about him, and held him thus while she whispered
motherly to him, as children have whispered to their dolls since the
first child played with the first mandrake:
"You must keep still; you are sorely hurt, but I have stanched the
blood."
Rainouart's wits were none too muddled to forget reverence. He stooped
his head and kissed the girl's hands where they met about his breast.
The touch of his lips upon her seemed to sting her virgin flesh through
to the pure heart, and she unclasped her hands with a little moan.
Rainouart looked up at her.
"Why do you cry out? Why do you withdraw your hands? My gratitude would
never offend you."
"You do not offend me," Argathona whispered, very softly, so softly
that he could scarcely hear her. But he did hear her, and so hearing he
now wondered, as Simon before him had wondered, how it happened that
his own dear French speech should sound at all strange to him. As the
girl's hands no longer restrained him, he struggled a little and sat
erect, and stared into her eyes as she kneeled beside him. His troubled
thoughts seemed to lapse again into a trance; surely he had strayed in
the guarded garden, surely he lay in the mystical pleasance, surely he
had touched with his lips the petals of the noble rose.
"What is your name?" he whispered, and she told him, and he repeated it
softly, "Argathona," and found it very sweet to say and hear.
"When I kissed your hands, Argathona," he murmured, "all the pain of
my wounds seemed to leave me, and I drew new life, new vigor, from the
kiss. But when you withdraw your touch from me the smart returns and
my head aches wearily. If you will let me kiss your hands once more I
think that would surely banish pain."
He pleaded not because he dreaded to bear pain, but because he longed
with all his heart to kiss her hands again, and he hoped to win her to
yield through pity. He asked no more in his speech than to kiss her
hands, and he asked no more in his heart. For this, though he knew it
not, was his first acquaintance with the meaning of love, and his white
chivalry would have died blithely for less grace than this from the
loved one.
"You must not suffer pain," the girl said, looking with troubled doubt
into his bright, mortal eyes. For this, though she knew it not, was
her first acquaintance with the meaning of love. Then she yielded her
hands to him sweetly as one who, being great, grants a favor, and
granting it is glad to be humble in the granting. The young French
knight took her white fingers in his and kissed them very tenderly,
very courteously, and as he kissed them he looked up into her pitying
eyes and longed to weep for the very keenness of the joy that filled
his being. It seemed to him on the instant that he had waited through
all the love-loneliness of his spring for the touch of those hands, for
the regard of those eyes. Surely Lord Love had locked his heart with a
golden key, to keep it as a shrine vacant till this hour and dedicated
to this image.
"You have the most wonderful hands in all the world," he stammered,
tremulous with a sense of intimate revelation. "Their touch yields
life. But you have the most wonderful face in the world, the most
wonderful eyes."
He had clean forgotten how he came there, he had clean forgotten
Athens, forgotten everything except the glorious certainty that he had
found the rose of the world. Argathona neared her face to his till she
almost touched his cheek with her lips. She knew with the wisdom of the
wood that he spoke the truth of his heart. She would have known even,
if she had been wise in the wisdom of the world, from the loyalty of
his voice, and she gave back the truth of her heart with the frankness
of the dawn of time.
"Your hands are strong and shapely, like the hands of the gods; your
eyes are bright, like the eyes of the gods; you are good to behold."
Rainouart colored, a little bashful as a gallant lad should be at the
high praise of a fair girl, and tried, manlike, to put it by in spite
of his wild pleasure at its sound and sense.
"So long as a man be brave, it matters little how he be formed and
featured, at least so all men say, but I have heard that some ladies
think otherwise." And he smiled shyly at her, hotly glad that she
should think well of him, spirit and substance together glad to
madness with happiness.
The dryad looked at him gravely. "Are there many mortals like this,"
she pondered--"so modest, so brave, so fair?" Her heart assured her
that this must be the pride and idol of the time.
"Comeliness is a mark of the favor of the gods," she asserted.
Rainouart pressed her hands closely, his spirit rekindling at the
exquisite contact, his soul desiring nothing better than this bright
hour. Yet he wondered at her words.
"Why do you speak like a pagan?" he asked. "The gods have gone long
ago."
The dryad sighed as she thought of the splendid figures riding to the
twilight land. Was it yesterday?
"Ay," she sighed, "the gods have gone long ago," and she stared across
the moonlit space into the blackness of the wood, and wondered what had
happened to her which had changed so strangely the ancient way.