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Forest Lovers

<h2 id="id01402" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXIV</h2> <h5 id="id01403">SECRET THINGS AT HAUTERIVE</h5> The first thing the old lady did was to go to an oak chest which was in the room, and rummage there. With many grunts and wheezes (for she was eaten with rheumatism) she drew out a bundle done up in an old shawl. This she opened upon the floor. "I belonged to a great lady once," said she, "though I don't look like it, my dear. These fal-lals have been over as dainty a body as your own in their day; and that was fifteen years ago to a tick. She gave 'em all to me when she took to the black, and now they shall go to my son's wife. Think of that, you who come from who knows who or where. If they fit you not like a glove, let me eat 'em." There were silks and damasks and brocades; webbed tissues of the East, Coän gauzes blue and green, Damascus purples, shot gold from Samarcand, crimson stuffs dipped in Syrian vats, rose-coloured silk from Trebizond, and embroidered jackets which smelt of Cairo or Bagdad, and glowed with the hues of Byzantium itself. Out of these she made choice. The girl shed her rags, and stood up at last in a gown of thin red silk, which from throat to ankle clung close about her shape. The dark beauty went imperially robed. "Wait a bit," said her dresser; "we'll look at you presently when you are shod and coifed to fit." She gave her a pair of red stockings and Moorish slippers for her feet; she massed up her black hair into a tower upon her head, and roped it about with a chain of sequins which had served their last chaffer at Venice; she girt a belt of filigree gold and turquoise about her waist, gave her a finishing pat, and stood out to spy at her. "Eh, eh! there you go for a jolly gentlewoman," she chuckled, and kissed her. "Give you a pair of sloe-black eyes for your violets, tip your nails with henna red, and you'd be a mate for the Soldan of Babylon in his glory. As you stand you're my bonny Countess Bel warmed in the blood—as she might have been if Bartlemy had had no vigil that one year." They sat to table and ate together. The old dame grew very friendly, and, as usual with her class, showed a spice of malice. "There is one here, let me tell you," she said as she munched her bacon, "even the lord of this town, who would be glad to know his way to Litany Row before morning." Isoult paled and watched her unconscious host; she knew that much already. "Yes, yes," she went on, the old ruminant, "he hath a rare twist for women, if they speak the truth who know him. There is one he hath hunted high and low, in forest and out, they say, and hath made himself a lord for her sake, whereas he was but a stalled ox in Malbank cloister. He hath made himself a lord, and killed his hundreds of honest men, and now he hath lost her. He—he!" The good woman chuckled at her thoughts over all this irony of events. "I might do son Falve a sorry turn," she pursued, "if I would. I should get paid for it in minted money, and Saint Mary knows how little of that has come my way of late. And I dare say that you would not take the exchange for a robbery. A lord for a smutty collier." She looked slyly at Isoult as she spoke. The girl's eyes wide with fear made her change her tune. If the daughter-elect were loyal, loyalty beseemed the mother. "What!" she quavered, "you are all for love and the man of your heart then? Well, well! I like you for it, child." Isoult's heart began to knock at her ribs. "Can I trust her? Can I trust her?" she thought; and her heart beat back, "Trust her, trust her, trust her." With bed-time came her chance. The old woman, whose geniality never endangered her shrewdness, bid the girl undress and get into bed first. The meek beauty obeyed. She was undressed, but not in bed, when there came a rain of knocks at the door. "Slip into bed, child, slip into bed," cried the other; "that's a man at the door." Isoult, half-dead with fright, once more obeyed. The knocking continued till the door was opened. "Who are you, in the name of Jesus?" said the woman, trembling. "Jesus be my witness, I come in His name. I am Brother Bonaccord," said a man without. "Save you, father," the woman replied, "but you cannot come in this night. There's a naked maid in the room." Isoult's plight was pitiable. She could do absolutely nothing but stay where she was. She dared not so much as cry out. "If she is a maid, it is very well," said Brother Bonaccord; "but I am quite sure she is not." "Heyday, what is this?" cried Falve's mother, highly scandalized. "Listen to me, Dame Ursula," the friar went on with a wagging finger. "Your son came with gossip of a marriage he was to make with a certain Isoult—" "'Tis so, 'tis so, indeed, father. Isoult la Desirous is her name—a most sweet maid." "No maiden at all, good woman, but a wife of my own making." "Ah, joys of Mary, what is this?" "Ask her, mistress, ask her." "I shall ask her, never you fear. Stay you there, father, for your life." "Trust me, ma'am." Dame Ursula went straight up to the bed and whipped off the blankets. There cowered the girl. "Tell me the sober truth by all the pains of Dies Irae," whispered her hostess. "Are you a maiden or none?" It was a shrewd torment that, double-forked. To deny was infamy, to affirm ruin. However, there was no escape from it: Isoult had never been a learned liar. "I am a maid, ma'am," she said in a whisper. "Cover yourself warm, my lamb, I'll twist him," said the delighted mother. She went quickly to the door. "May our lord the holy Pope of Rome find you mercy, father," she vowed, "but you'll find none here. The girl has testified against you. Now will you marry 'em?" "That I will not, by our Lord," replied the friar. "There's infamy abroad, and I'll leave it, for it's none of my making. I wish you good-night, mistress. Bid your son to the Black Brothers. Saint Dominic may deal with him. Saint Francis was a clean man, and so must we be clean." "Then get ye clean tongues lest ye lick others foul, ye brown viper," screamed Mrs. Ursula, as he splashed down the kennel. Isoult was desperate; but luck pointed her one road yet. You will remember the trinkets round her neck: Prosper's ring was one, the other was that which old Mald had felt for and found safe in her bosom on her wedding night. When, therefore, Mrs. Ursula came bridling into the light full of her recent victory, she saw the girl before her trembling, and holding out a gold chain at a stretch. "Lord's name, child, you'll catch your death," cried she. "Slip on your night-gown and into the bed." "Trust her now, trust her now," went Isoult's wild heart. "Not yet, mother," said she, "you must hear me now." Ursula dropped into a chair. Isoult knelt before her and put the ring in her old hand. "Mother, look at this ring," she began, out of breath already, "and look at me, and then let me go. For with this ring I was wed a year ago to a certain lord whom I love dearly, and to whom I have never yet come as a wife. So what I told you was true, and what the Grey Friar told you was true also, when he said that I was a wife of his wedding. He wed me to my lord sure and fast to save me from a hanging; but not for love of me was I taken by my husband, and not for desire of his to mate his soul to mine. But for love of the love I bore him I dared not let him come, even when he would have come. We have been a year wedded, and many days and nights we have wandered the forest and dwelt together here and there, until now by some fate we are put apart. But I know we shall come together again, and he whom I love so bitterly shall set the ring in its place again where he first put it, and himself lie where now it lies. And so the wound and the pain I have shall be at last assuaged, and, Love, who had struck me so deep, shall crown me." So said Isoult, kneeling and crying. Whatever else she may have touched in her who listened, she touched her curiosity. The old woman dropped the ring to look at the girl. True enough, below her left breast there was a small red wound, and upon it a drop of fresh blood. Mrs. Ursula took the wet face between her two chapped hands and laughed at it, not unkindly. "My bonny lass," said she, "if this be all thou hast to tell me it will not stay my son Falve. Here in this forest we think little of the giving of rings, but much of what should follow it. But thy wedding stopped at the ringing, from what I can learn. That is no wedding at all. Doubt not this knight of thine will never return; they never do return, my lassie. Neither doubt but that Falve will wed thee faster than any ring can do. And as for thy scratch and crying heart, my child, trust Falve again to stanch the one and still the other. For that is a man's way. And now get into bed, child; it grows late." There was nothing for it but to obey. Her game had been played and had failed. She got into bed and Ursula followed. Then as she lay there quaking, crying quietly to herself, her heart's message went on that bid her trust. Trust! What could she trust? The thought shaped itself and grew clearer every minute; the answer pealed in her brain. The token! she recalled her mother's words, the only words she had spoken on her marriage night. "It shall not fail thee to whomsoever thou shalt show it." "Help, Saint Isidore!" she breathed, and sat up in the bed. This made the old woman very cross. "Drat the girl," she muttered, "why don't she sleep while she can?" Isoult leaned over her and put the token in her hand. "Look also at this token, mother, before we sleep," she said. Mrs. Ursula, grumbling and only half awake, took the thing in one hand and hoisted herself with the other. She sat up, peered at it in the light of the cresset, dropped it to rub her eyes, fumbled for it again, and peered again; she whispered prayers to herself and adjurations, called on Christ and Christ's mother, vehemently crossed herself many times, scrambled out of bed, and plumped down beside it on her two knees. "Mild Mary," she quavered, "mild Mary, that is enough! That I should live to see this day. Oh, saints in glory! Let us look at it again." Isoult drooped over the edge of the bed; Ursula looked and was astounded, she wondered and prayed, she laughed and cried. Isoult grew frightened. "Wed her!" cried the old dame in ecstasy. "Wed the Queen of Sheba next!" Then she grew mighty serious. She got up and dropped a curtesy. "It is enough, Princess. He dare not look at you again. At dawn you shall leave this place. Now sleep easy, for if I hurt a hair of your head I might never hope for heaven's gate." She made the girl sleep alone. "This is my proper station before you, madam," said she, and lay down on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was no dream. In the morning she was up before the light. Isoult found a bath prepared, and in her gaoler of over-night a dresser who was as brisk as a bee and as humble as a spaniel. "Old servants are the best," said the crone in her defence; "they're not so slippery, but they know how things should go on and off. Ah, and give me a young mistress and a beauty," she went on to sigh, "such as God Almighty hath sent me this night." Either Saint Isidore had entered the token, or the token had been swallowed by Saint Isidore. When the girl was dressed in her red silk gown of the night before, with a hood of the same for her head, her red stockings and her red shoes, she was set at table, and waited upon hand and foot. No questions were asked, but very much was taken for granted. Ursula had her finger to her lip every sentence; she wallowed in mystery. "You are not safe here, Princess," she whispered, "but I will put you where only safety is for the moment—in Mid-Morgraunt. Affairs, as you know, are not well where they should be; but as soon as you are bestowed, I will go forth with that which will make them as bright as day. I will see one I never thought to face again; I shall win honour which God knows I am late a-winning. Leave everything to me." Isoult asked nothing better, for the very sufficient reason that she knew nothing. Her earth-born habit of taking all things as they came in order stood her in good part; she had no temptation to ask what all this meant. But she did not forget to thank the great Saint Isidore latent in the crystal. Everything being ready, the old woman threw a long brown cloak over her charge before they ventured out into the still twilight streets. The wet was steaming off the ground, but the day promised fair. Hauterive was nearly empty: they were not challenged at the gate, met nobody terrific. Once outside the walls they descended a sharp incline, struck almost immediately a forest path, and in half-an-hour from that were deep in the dewy woods. Old Ursula held on briskly for a mile or so in and out of fern and brake. Then she stopped, out of breath, but beaming benevolence and humility. "We are safe enough now, madam," she said, and went on to explain, "Hold you by that path, Princess, until beech and holly end and oaks begin. Follow the dip of the land, you will come to Thornyhold Brush; with those you find there you may stay until you know who shall send for you. That may be likely a week or more, for I am not so young as I would be, and the roads are thick with Galordians. Now kiss me quickly if you will stoop so low: it is the last time I shall ask it of you." Isoult thanked her with sparkling eyes and warm red lips; then she stood alone in the wood watching her old friend go. Afterwards she herself took to the path, wondering, but light-hearted and minded to run. The spruce Falve, curled and anointed for the bridal, found no wife, but his mother, who called him a fool, a knave, a notorious evil-liver and contemner of holy persons. This was hard to bear, for part of it at least he knew to be quite true. What was harder was, that hitherto he had always believed his mother of his party. But there is no pietist like your reformed rake; so Falve left the huckster's shop vowing vengeance. The day was July 18, and all the town astir, for Galors de Born and his riders were just in from a raid. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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