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Forest Lovers

<h2 id="id01641" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> <h5 id="id01642">MERCY WITH THE BEASTS</h5> Isoult, so soon as she had seen the last of old Ursula, turned her face to the south and the sun. She walked a mile through bush and bramble with picked-up skirts; then she sat down and took off her scarlet shoes and stockings, threw them aside, and went on with a lighter tread. Not that she was above the glory of silk robes and red slippers, or unconscious that they heightened the charm of her person—the old woman's glass, the old woman's face had told her better than that. Indeed, if she could have believed she would meet with Prosper at the end of that day, she would have borne with them, hindrance or none. But this was not to be. Her hair was yet a good six inches from her knees. So now, bare-legged and bare-footed, her skirts pulled back and pinned behind her, she felt the glad tune of the woods singing in her veins, and ran against the stream of cool air deeper into the fountain-heart whence it flowed, the great silence and shade of the forest. The path showed barer, the stems more sparse, the roof above her denser. Soon there was no more grass, neither any moss; nothing but mast and the leaves of many autumns. Keeping always down the slope, and a little in advance of the sun, by mid-day she had run clear of the beech forest into places where there grew hornbeams, with one or two sapling oaks. There was tall bracken here, and dewy grass again for her feet. She rested herself, sat deep in shade listening to the murmur of bees in the sunlight and the gentle complaining of wood-pigeons in the tree-tops far toward the blue. She lay down luxuriously in the fern, pillowed her cheek on her folded hands, closed her eyes, and let all the forest peace fan her to happy dreaming. It was impossible to be ill at ease in such a harbour. The alien faces and brawl of the town, the grime, the sweat, the blows of the charcoal-burners, her secret life there in the midst of them, the shame, the hooting and the stunning of her last day at distant High March, Maulfry, Galors, leering Falve—all these grim apparitions sank back into the green woodland vistas; all the shocks and alarums of her timid little soul were subdued by the rustling boughs and the crooning voices of the doves. She saw bright country in her dreams. Prosper was abroad on a spurred horse; his helmet gleamed in the sun; his enemies fell at his onset. The deer browsed about her, from the branches a squirrel peeped down, the woodbirds with kindly peering eyes hopped within reach of her cradled arms. Soon, soon, soon, she should see him! She would be sitting at his knees; her cheek would be on his breast, his arm hold her close, his kind eyes read all her love story. What a reward for what a little aching! She fell asleep in the fern and smiled at her own dreams. When she awoke two girls sat sentinel beside her. They were ruddy, handsome, cheerful girls, with scarcely a pin's point of difference between them. They had brown eyes, brown loose hair, the bloom of healthy blood on their skin. One was more fully formed, more assured; perhaps she laughed rather less than the other; it was not noticeable. Isoult, with sleepy eyes, regarded them languidly, half awake. They sat on either side of her; each clasped a knee with her two hands; both watched her. Then the elder with a little laugh shook her hair back from her shoulders, stooped quickly forward, and kissed her. Isoult sat up. "Oh, who are you?" she wondered. "I am Belvisée," said the kissing girl. "I am Mellifont," said the laugher. "Do you live here?" "Yes." "Is this Thornyhold?" "Thornyhold Brush is very near." "Will you take me? I am to wait there." "Come, sister." Belvisée helped her up by the hand. When she was afoot Mellifont caught her other hand and kissed her in her turn—a glad and friendly little embrace. Friends indeed they looked as they stood hand-linked in the fern. All three were of a height, Isoult a shade shorter than the sisters. She contrasted her attire with theirs; her own so ceremonious, theirs, what there was of it, simple in the extreme. A smock of coarse green flax, cut at a slant, which left one shoulder and breast bare, was looped on to the other shoulder, and caught at the waist by a leather strap. It bagged over the belt, and below it fell to brush the knees. Arms, legs, and feet were bare and brown. Visibly they wore nothing else. Mellifont laughed to see the scrutiny. "We must undress you," she said. "Why?" "You cannot run like that." "No, that is quite true. But——" "Oh," said Belvisée, "you are quite safe. No men come where the king is." "The king!" "King of the herd." "Ah, the deer are near by." "All Thornhold is theirs. The great herd is here." "Do you live with them?" "Yes." "And they feed you?" "Yes." "Ah," said Isoult, "then I shall be at peace till my lord comes, if there are no men." "Have you a lord, a lover?" "Yes, he is my lord, and I love him dearly." "We have none. What is your name?" "I am called Isoult la Desirous." "Because you are a lover?" "Yes. I am a lover." "I will never love a man," said Belvisée rather gravely. "All men are cruel." "I will never have a lover, nor be a lover, until men know what love is," said Mellifont in her turn. "And what is love, do you think?" Isoult asked her thrilling. "Love! Love! It is service," said Belvisée. "Service and giving," said Mellifont. Isoult turned aside and kissed Mellifont's cheek. They had reached the low ground, for they had been walking during this colloquy. Oaks stood all about them, with bracken shoulder high. Into this the three girls plunged, and held on till they were stopped by a shallow brook. The sisters waded in, so did Isoult when she had picked up her skirts and petticoats. After a little course up stream through water joyfully cool they reached a place where the brook made a bend round the roots of an enormous oak; turning this they opened on a pool broad and deep. "We will robe you here," said Belvisée, meaning rather to unrobe her. The great gnarly roots of the oak were as pillars to a chamber which ran far into the bank. Here the two girls undressed Isoult, and here they folded and laid by her red silk gown. She became a pearly copy of themselves in all but her hair. Her hair! They had never seen such hair. Measuring it they found it almost to her knees. "You cannot go with it loose," said they. "We must knot it up again; but we will go first to the herd." "Let us go now," added Mellifont on an impulse, and took Isoult by the hand. Crossing the brook below the pool, they climbed the bank and found themselves in a sunny broad place. The light glanced in and out of the slim grey trees. The bracken was thinner, the grass rich and dewy. Here Isoult saw the great herd of red deer—hundreds of hundreds—hinds and calves with some brockets and harts, busy feeding. Over all that spacious glade the herd was spread out till there seemed no end to it. A sentinel stag left feeding as they came on. He looked up for a moment, stamped his foot, and went back to grass. One or two others copied him; but mostly the three girls could go among them without notice. Imperceptibly, however, the herd followed them feeding on their way to the king, so that by the time they reached him there was a line of deer behind them, and deer at either flank. The great hart also stamped his foot and stood at gaze, with towering antlers and dewy nostrils very wide. Before him Belvisée and Mellifont let go of Isoult's hand: she was to make her entry alone. She put them behind her back, hardly knowing what was expected of her, shrank a little into herself and waited timidly. Slowly then the great hart advanced before his peering courtiers, pacing on with nodding head and horns. Exactly in front of Isoult he planted his forefeet, thence he looked down from his height upon her. She had always loved the deer, and was not now afraid; but she covered herself with her hair. The king stag smelt her over, beginning at her feet. He snuffed for a long time at the nape of her neck, blew in her hair so as to spray it out like a fountain scattered to the wind; then he fell to licking her cheek. She, made bold, put a hand and laid it on his mane. Shyly she stood thus, waiting events. The great beast lifted his head high and gave a loud bellow; all the deer chorused him; the forest rang. So Isoult was made free of the herd. Belvisée and Mellifont lay beside her on the grass. Isoult lay on her face, while Mellifont coiled and knotted up her hair. "If love is giving, and you are a lover, Isoult," said she, "you would give your hair." "I have given it," said Isoult, and told them her story as they all lay there together. "And to think that you have endured all this from men, and yet love a man!" cried flushed Mellifont, when she had made an end. But Isoult smiled wisely at her. "Ah, Mellifont," she said, "the more you saw of men, the more you would find to love in him." "Indeed, I should do no such thing," said Mellifont, firing up again. "You could not help it. Everyone must love him." "That might not suit you, Isoult," said Belvisée. "Why should it not? Would it prevent my love to know him loved? I should love him all the more." "Hark!" cried Mellifont on a sudden. She laid her ear to the ground, then jumped to her feet. "Come to the herd, come to the herd," she whispered. Belvisée was on her feet also in a trice. Both girls were hot and bright. "What disturbs you?" asked Isoult, who had heard nothing. "Horsemen! quick, quick." They all ran between the trees to regain the deer. Isoult could hear no horses; but the sisters had, and now she saw that the deer had. Every head was up, every ear still, every nostril on the stretch. Listening now intently, faint and far she did hear a muffled knocking—it was like a beating heart, she thought. Whatever it was, the deer guessed an enemy. Upon a sudden stamp, the whole herd was in motion. Led by the hart-royal, they trotted noiselessly down the wood, till in the thick fern they lay still. The girls lay down with them. The sound gained rapidly upon them. Soon they heard the crackling of twigs, then the swish of swept brushwood, then the creaking of girths. Isoult hid her face, lying prone on her breast. Galors and his men came thundering through the wood. Their horses were reeking, dripping from the flanks. The riders, four of them, looking neither right nor left, past over the open ground, where a few minutes before she whom they desperately sought had been lying at their mercy. But Galors, fled by all things living in Morgraunt, scourged on like a destroying wind and was gone. Isoult little knew how near she had been to the unclean thing. If she had seen him she would have run straight to him without a thought, for he bore the red feathers in his helmet, and behind him, on the shield, danced in the glory of new gilt the fesse dancettée. It may be doubted if the instincts of the earth-born can ever pierce the trappings of a knight-at-arms. They trust in emotions which such gear is designed to hide or transfigure. Isoult, observe, had caught Prosper out of his harness, when before the face of the sky she had thrilled him to pity. But when once he had stooped to her, for the very fact, she made haste to set him up on high in her heart, and in more seemly guise. There and thenceforward he stood on his pedestal figured, not as a pitiful saviour (whom a girl must be taught to worship), but as an armed god who suffered her homage. She was no better (or no worse, if you will) than the rest of her sex in this, that she loved to love, and was bewildered to be loved. So she would never get him out of armour again. Her god might not stoop. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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