The White Company
months. In all the darkness there was but the one bright spot of the
sturdy comrades whom he had left that morning; if he could find them
again all would be well. The afternoon was not very advanced, for all
that had befallen him. When a man is afoot at cock-crow much may be done
in the day. If he walked fast he might yet overtake his friends ere they
reached their destination. He pushed on therefore, now walking and now
running. As he journeyed he bit into a crust which remained from his
Beaulieu bread, and he washed it down by a draught from a woodland
stream.
It was no easy or light thing to journey through this great forest,
which was some twenty miles from east to west and a good sixteen from
Bramshaw Woods in the north to Lymington in the south. Alleyne, however,
had the good fortune to fall in with a woodman, axe upon shoulder,
trudging along in the very direction that he wished to go. With his
guidance he passed the fringe of Bolderwood Walk, famous for old ash
and yew, through Mark Ash with its giant beech-trees, and on through
the Knightwood groves, where the giant oak was already a great tree,
but only one of many comely brothers. They plodded along together, the
woodman and Alleyne, with little talk on either side, for their thoughts
were as far asunder as the poles. The peasant's gossip had been of the
hunt, of the bracken, of the gray-headed kites that had nested in Wood
Fidley, and of the great catch of herring brought back by the boats of
Pitt's Deep. The clerk's mind was on his brother, on his future--above
all on this strange, fierce, melting, beautiful woman who had broken
so suddenly into his life, and as suddenly passed out of it again. So
_distrait_ was he and so random his answers, that the woodman took
to whistling, and soon branched off upon the track to Burley, leaving
Alleyne upon the main Christchurch road.
Down this he pushed as fast as he might, hoping at every turn and rise
to catch sight of his companions of the morning. From Vinney Ridge to
Rhinefield Walk the woods grow thick and dense up to the very edges of
the track, but beyond the country opens up into broad dun-colored moors,
flecked with clumps of trees, and topping each other in long, low curves
up to the dark lines of forest in the furthest distance. Clouds of
insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was
full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot
across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.
Once a white-necked sea eagle soared screaming high over the traveller's
head, and again a flock of brown bustards popped up from among the
bracken, and blundered away in their clumsy fashion, half running, half
flying, with strident cry and whirr of wings.
There were folk, too, to be met upon the road--beggars and couriers,
chapmen and tinkers--cheery fellows for the most part, with a rough jest
and homely greeting for each other and for Alleyne. Near Shotwood he
came upon five seamen, on their way from Poole to Southampton--rude
red-faced men, who shouted at him in a jargon which he could scarce
understand, and held out to him a great pot from which they had been
drinking--nor would they let him pass until he had dipped pannikin in
and taken a mouthful, which set him coughing and choking, with the tears
running down his cheeks. Further on he met a sturdy black-bearded man,
mounted on a brown horse, with a rosary in his right hand and a long
two-handed sword jangling against his stirrup-iron. By his black robe
and the eight-pointed cross upon his sleeve, Alleyne recognized him
as one of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, whose
presbytery was at Baddesley. He held up two fingers as he passed, with a
“_Benedic, fili mi!_” whereat Alleyne doffed hat and bent knee, looking
with much reverence at one who had devoted his life to the overthrow of
the infidel. Poor simple lad! he had not learned yet that what men are
and what men profess to be are very wide asunder, and that the Knights
of St. John, having come into large part of the riches of the ill-fated
Templars, were very much too comfortable to think of exchanging their
palace for a tent, or the cellars of England for the thirsty deserts of
Syria. Yet ignorance may be more precious than wisdom, for Alleyne as he
walked on braced himself to a higher life by the thought of this other's
sacrifice, and strengthened himself by his example which he could scarce
have done had he known that the Hospitaller's mind ran more upon malmsey
than on Mamelukes, and on venison rather than victories.
As he pressed on the plain turned to woods once more in the region of
Wilverley Walk, and a cloud swept up from the south with the sun shining
through the chinks of it. A few great drops came pattering loudly
down, and then in a moment the steady swish of a brisk shower, with
the dripping and dropping of the leaves. Alleyne, glancing round for
shelter, saw a thick and lofty holly-bush, so hollowed out beneath that
no house could have been drier. Under this canopy of green two men were
already squatted, who waved their hands to Alleyne that he should join
them. As he approached he saw that they had five dried herrings laid
out in front of them, with a great hunch of wheaten bread and a leathern
flask full of milk, but instead of setting to at their food they
appeared to have forgot all about it, and were disputing together with
flushed faces and angry gestures. It was easy to see by their dress and
manner that they were two of those wandering students who formed about
this time so enormous a multitude in every country in Europe. The one
was long and thin, with melancholy features, while the other was fat and
sleek, with a loud voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid.
“Come hither, good youth,” he cried, “come hither! _Vultus ingenui
puer_. Heed not the face of my good coz here. _Foenum habet in cornu_,
as Don Horace has it; but I warrant him harmless for all that.”
“Stint your bull's bellowing!” exclaimed the other. “If it come to
Horace, I have a line in my mind: _Loquaces si sapiat_----How doth it
run? The English o't being that a man of sense should ever avoid a great
talker. That being so, if all were men of sense then thou wouldst be a
lonesome man, coz.”
“Alas! Dicon, I fear that your logic is as bad as your philosophy or
your divinity--and God wot it would be hard to say a worse word than
that for it. For, hark ye: granting, _propter argumentum_, that I am a
talker, then the true reasoning runs that since all men of sense should
avoid me, and thou hast not avoided me, but art at the present moment
eating herrings with me under a holly-bush, ergo you are no man of
sense, which is exactly what I have been dinning into your long ears
ever since I first clapped eyes on your sunken chops.”
“Tut, tut!” cried the other. “Your tongue goes like the clapper of
a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring.
Understand first, however, that there are certain conditions attached to
it.”
“I had hoped,” said Alleyne, falling into the humor of the twain, “that
a tranchoir of bread and a draught of milk might be attached to it.”
“Hark to him, hark to him!” cried the little fat man. “It is even thus,
Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating
sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no
man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look
at your own case. A duller man never stepped, and yet within the week
you have said three things which might pass, and one thing the day we
left Fordingbridge which I should not have been ashamed of myself.”
“Enough, rattle-pate, enough!” said the other. “The milk you shall have
and the bread also, friend, together with the herring, but you must hold
the scales between us.”
“If he hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother,” cried
the fat man. “But I pray you, good youth, to tell us whether you are a
learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have studied at Oxenford or at
Paris.”
“I have some small stock of learning,” Alleyne answered, picking at his
herring, “but I have been at neither of these places. I was bred amongst
the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu Abbey.”
“Pooh, pooh!” they cried both together. “What sort of an upbringing is
that?”
“_Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum_,” quoth Alleyne.
“Come, brother Stephen, he hath some tincture of letters,” said the
melancholy man more hopefully. “He may be the better judge, since he
hath no call to side with either of us. Now, attention, friend, and let
your ears work as well as your nether jaw. _Judex damnatur_--you know
the old saw. Here am I upholding the good fame of the learned Duns
Scotus against the foolish quibblings and poor silly reasonings of
Willie Ockham.”
“While I,” quoth the other loudly, “do maintain the good sense
and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the
crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little
wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of
Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice
to say what the rogue means.”
“Certes, Stephen Hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice,” cried the other.
“It is as though a mole cried out against the morning star, because he
could not see it. But our dispute, friend, is concerning the nature of
that subtle essence which we call thought. For I hold with the learned
Scotus that thought is in very truth a thing, even as vapor or fumes,
or many other substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. For,
look you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a
man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought itself be a
material thing, even as the book is. Have I expressed it? Do I make it
plain?”
“Whereas I hold,” shouted the other, “with my revered preceptor,
_doctor, praeclarus et excellentissimus_, that all things are but
thought; for when thought is gone I prythee where are the things then?
Here are trees about us, and I see them because I think I see them, but
if I have swooned, or sleep, or am in wine, then, my thought having gone
forth from me, lo the trees go forth also. How now, coz, have I touched
thee on the raw?”
Alleyne sat between them munching his bread, while the twain disputed
across his knees, leaning forward with flushed faces and darting
hands, in all the heat of argument. Never had he heard such jargon of
scholastic philosophy, such fine-drawn distinctions, such cross-fire of
major and minor, proposition, syllogism, attack and refutation. Question
clattered upon answer like a sword on a buckler. The ancients, the
fathers of the Church, the moderns, the Scriptures, the Arabians, were
each sent hurtling against the other, while the rain still dripped and
the dark holly-leaves glistened with the moisture. At last the fat man
seemed to weary of it, for he set to work quietly upon his meal, while
his opponent, as proud as the rooster who is left unchallenged upon the
midden, crowed away in a last long burst of quotation and deduction.
Suddenly, however, his eyes dropped upon his food, and he gave a howl of
dismay.
“You double thief!” he cried, “you have eaten my herrings, and I without
bite or sup since morning.”
“That,” quoth the other complacently, “was my final argument, my
crowning effort, or _peroratio_, as the orators have it. For, coz, since
all thoughts are things, you have but to think a pair of herrings, and
then conjure up a pottle of milk wherewith to wash them down.”
“A brave piece of reasoning,” cried the other, “and I know of but one
reply to it.” On which, leaning forward, he caught his comrade a rousing