The dryad a novel
patting, and Simon was in a simmering bad temper with destiny and the
sisters three when he reached the fringe of the glade and saw the youth
and the maiden standing together. He paused, unseen, unheeded, on the
farther side of darkness, rubbing his bristling chin. They looked to
be of very good accord together, and his blood boiled at their amity.
"It were a shame to spoil sport," he said to himself, apologetically,
for what he was about to do, as he drew back a little deeper into the
wood, still unseen and unheard. Then, "it were a shame to lose sport,"
he added, more truthfully to his itching curiosity, and dropping
noiselessly on his hands and knees he proceeded to crawl very quietly
towards a part of the wood nearer to the pair from which he might
certainly oversee their deeds better, and also possibly overhear their
words.
He moved quite stealthily and swiftly for his volume of body, for
he had learned the primals of forest strategy when he served his
apprenticeship to war under Philip the Fair, and his celerity of
passage was accompanied by little rustling. At another time, though he
did not know this, he could not have hoped to scramble so through the
brushwood unperceived by the woodland sense of Argathona, but contact
with a mortal sometimes dulls the immortal wit, and Argathona was
absorbed by other than woodland thoughts. Indeed, if some faint sound
of his patient progress had troubled the night, it would have fallen
unheeded on the ears of those two who were wading straight from the
shallows into the deeps of love.
At last Simon found his profitable lair and lay hunched up in the
darkness with his chin propped on his fists, watching the boy and girl.
He interpreted their gestures with a raging heart, hearing now and then
something of the words they spoke, for the night was very still. His
torpid sense of honor was untroubled by this playing of the spy, for he
felt now a very personal sense of enmity to the stranger knight who, as
he was inclined to phrase it, had taken his wood-girl away from him. It
was Simon's simple creed that if he cast his eyes upon a girl in favor,
that girl was his by right; wherefore he watched the mutual wooing
with hot eyes of wrath, and there were wild moments when he longed to
leap out upon the pair, slay the man, and seize the girl--and perhaps
he would have done so had he not been mortally afraid of the maid. But
when he saw the youth reclining upon the grass and Argathona bending
so tenderly over him, pity began to pull at his heartstrings sorely
against his will--pity for the maid, naturally, not pity for the man.
When the dryad, after breathing sleep on the face of her lover,
disappeared into the forest Simon groped cautiously from his cover
and moved stealthily over the moonlit space to the side of the
sleeping man. He looked down upon the young, still face of Rainouart,
rubbing his russet chin thoughtfully as he shrugged his shoulders in
astonishment.
"What does she see," he asked himself, "in that smooth, unmeaning face
that she prefers him to me--to me who know what love means, and war,
and how to love women, and carry my liquor, and who never wasted time
over a silly, painted book?"
That same painted book was still in the pouch of the young man's
girdle, where he had thrust it when he had come from his reverie. There
was a corner sticking out and it caught Simon's eye. He stooped and
pulled the book from its concealment, a little square of vellum pages,
scribed in a fine, clerkly hand, craftily enriched with pictures, and
he balanced it curiously on his palm.
"What was there," he asked himself, "in such a lump of ink-stained,
pigmented parchment to make a man forget that he was alive?"
Then, after a moment's hesitation, he slipped the volume into his own
pouch as a lawful prize, resolving at some future time to see what
he could make of its pages. The glimpse of the little, painted book
fiercely rekindled his old resentment, which had withered a little at
the sight of his enemy lying helpless on the grass. His fingers slipped
to the horn handle of the knife that nestled in his girdle, and he
moved it up and down from its sheath, enjoying grimly the slipperiness
of the steel in the leather. Presently he plucked the blade bare and
contemplated its brightness.
"It is but jamming this to the hilt," he thought, "in that quiet, white
flesh, and the Duchy of Athens were sadly lacking an heir, and my white
witch were sadly in want of a lover."
It was an alluring thought for a very unscrupulous fellow, but he
pushed it aside at last, ramming the knife home with an oath, although
he made a wry face at his abnegation. "The pretty witch would weep
and her tears would grieve me," he thought; "and, besides, the fool
is asleep and at my advantage, and belike he has not the blood left
to fight with if I kicked him into waking and challenged him to fair
battle."
As he thus reluctantly refused murder, he noticed that something
glittered on the grass by the side of the sleeping man. Simon stooped
and picked it up, and examined it carefully in the moonlight. It was a
big, gold ring admirably wrought with the image of the Saviour of the
world upon the tree, and set with little studs about the circle for the
saying of the rosary.
"By the mass!" said Simon to the surrounding silence, "this is the
ring he offered her." But even as he spoke thus, and as he weighed the
ring in his palm, he was made aware that he might speak to silence no
longer.
IX
THE DUCHESS OF THEBES
Through the regal quiet of the night Simon could hear, no great way
off, the muffled sound of the tramping of many feet. Turning his
watchful face to the white roadway, after a little while he beheld a
number of gleaming specks scarcely bigger than so many glow-worms.
Then came what seemed like a dark, rolling cloud starred with points
of fire, and this presently resolved itself into a mass of armed men,
some of them on horseback, some of them bearing torches whose light
flowed ruddy over shields and helms and spears. With the help of these
earthly lights and of the light of the moon in heaven he saw that the
torch-bearers and the armed men formed two bodies, one preceding and
one following a number of litters of which the most sumptuous was drawn
by four small black horses.
As this procession moved beneath his wondering gaze along the highway,
those who led the van suddenly halted and seemed to look in Simon's
direction and hold conference together. Instantly Simon remembered
that he stood conspicuous enough against the moonlight in the open,
and that his presence in that lonely place had naturally attracted
the attention of the travellers. But he did not know the meaning of
fear, and, though he was ever of a prudent disposition, he felt no need
for flight, easy though flight would have been into the concealment
of the wood. For he was conscious that he was doing no harm, and he
entertained no expectation of harm from a company so numerous, so
well armed, and travelling with so many lights by night in a time of
peace. In no such fashion did marauders go abroad, so Simon resolved
with little self-discussion to stand where he would and see out the
adventure.
The new-comers were such a little way off, and so plainly to be
observed in the quavering pool of torch-light spilled on the white
path, that he could see how first the leaders of van and rear left
their ranks and consulted together, and how next the curtains of the
leading litter were plucked aside and a woman's head thrust forth,
while a woman's imperious voice said something in question which he
could not catch. Then the curtains of the other litters were pulled
aside and other women thrust their heads into the night, squealing out
many questions with sleepy voices. Then he heard the same imperious
voice speak again, and the speaker railed at the others, rating them
roundly for silly fools, and telling them to hold their peace, at
which the pages about the litters tittered, and the women's heads were
swiftly withdrawn and their voices silent. Then she who spoke so
haughtily gave a command, and immediately the pages who led the four
black horses turned them from the roadway and guided them carefully
across the grass in his direction. A few of the escort remained on the
highway with the other litters, but most of the knights a-horseback,
and the men-at-arms and the torch-bearers, accompanied the litter and
formed a great circle of steel and flame around Simon, where he stood
placidly guarding the sleeping body of the young Lord of Athens, and
gazing into the set faces of the strangers, and wondering what was
going to happen next.
What did happen was that the four black horses halted a few yards from
him, that the silken curtains of the litter were sharply pulled apart,
and that a very beautiful face revealed itself to him in the mingled
moonlight and torch-light. It was a splendid, sensual face, of the kind
that appealed to Simon's directness, skin the color of fine ivory, hair
the color of smooth ebony, eyes that seemed to change with every change
of light, with every mood of mind, with every phase of desire, like
a cat's, and a mouth as ripely red as the berries of the rowan-tree.
Such a face might Semiramis have shown nightly to her nightly changing
lovers ere they glided into Tigris; such a face might Clytemnestra have
shown to her impatient paramour when she had newly butchered the king
of men. Simon's simple, straightforward thought was that he wished the
lady were for instant sale, and that he possessed the opulence which
might purchase her. Simon's reflections in such matters were always
direct.
The woman's eyes were fixed on Simon's stalwart body with a cold
commendation of its proportions, but she spoke not to Simon but to a
page in cloth of gold who stood obedient by her litter side.
"What is the matter, Bohemond?" she asked, in a voice that was wont
to govern those who heard it with the sensuous charm of strange music
chanted at sunset. Her eyes were still fixed on Simon, and Simon,
nothing daunted, gave her back her gaze as boldly as if she had been a
staring kitchen-wench, while the knights and men-at-arms stood about as
fixed and rigid as armored effigies in audience halls.
"Grace," the golden page answered, "here lies a man dead or sleeping on
the grass, and here stands a sturdy fellow with a club that keeps watch
over him."
The lady whom the page hailed as "Grace" pushed aside the curtains of
her litter impatiently and stepped into the moonlight. She was no more
than common tall, but she carried her head high and commandingly, and
Simon, still eying her steadfastly, thought that she walked like some
old-time empress. Swiftly she stepped to where Rainouart lay, bent over
him, and recognized him as the gallant youth whose face and form had
stirred her facile pulses when he rode victorious down the lists in
Paris, and who denied her as decidedly as he denied all the ladies at
the court of Philip the Fair. She swung on Simon like a cat about to
scratch.
"This is the young Lord Rainouart of Athens," she cried. "How comes he
here and in this case? Have you injured him, villain?"
"I have neither hurt him nor helped him," Simon answered, composedly,
"nor, for the matter of that, am I a villain, nor other than an honest
soldier; but I can tell you all there is to tell when I know to whom I
speak."
The little gilded page stepped a pace forward and addressed Simon
sharply.
"It is the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, fellow, who honors you with
her speech."
Simon shrugged his shoulders; the woman was a fine piece of flesh were
she duchess or no duchess, and his gaze was blatant admiration. The