Rabbits came creeping out of bush and bracken, a wood-dove began her moan, two or three deer stood up. Then Prosper thought--"If the beasts come to prayers, it behoves me as a Christian man to hear Ma.s.s also.
Moreover, it were fitting that adventure should begin in that manner, to be undertaken in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." He went forward accordingly, flush with the girl, and knelt down by her. When it was the time of Communion, both drew nearer and received Christ"s body. Prosper, for his part, did not forget the soul of the dead man, De Genlis or another, whose body he had buried in Cadnam Wood, but commended it to G.o.d together with the sacrifice of the altar. The woman came into his mind. "No, by G.o.d," thought he; "she is the devil, or of him; I will never pray for her," which was Prosper all over.
Ma.s.s done, he remembered that he had the honour to be uncommonly hungry. The priest had gone back into the wood, the girl was removing the altar furniture, and seemed unconscious of his presence; but Prosper could not afford that.
"My young gentlewoman," he said with a bow, "you will see before you, if you turn your head, a very hungry man."
"Are you hungry, sir?" she said, looking and smiling at him, "then in three minutes you shall be filled." Whereupon she went away with her load, and quickly returned with another more to Prosper"s mind. She gave him bread and hot milk in a great bowl, she gave him a dishful of wild raspberries, and waited on him herself in the prettiest manner.
Without word said she watered his horse for him; and all the while she talked to him, but of nothing in the world but the birds and beasts, the falling of the leaf, and the thousand little haps and chances of her quiet life. Prosper suited his conversation to her book. He told her of the white bird"s rescue, and she opened her blue eyes in wonder.
"Why, I dreamed of it last night," she said very solemnly.
"You dreamed of it, Alice?" he echoed. She was called, she had told him, Alice of the Hermitage.
"Yes, yes. A white bird and two hen-harriers. Ah, and there was more.
You have not yet done all. You have not yet begun!" She was full of the thing.
"By my faith, I have wrung the necks of the pair of them," said Prosper. "I know not how they can expect more of me than that."
"Listen," said Alice of the Hermitage, "the bird will be again chased, again wounded. Morgraunt is full of hawks. You will see her again. My dream was very precise. You will see her again; but this time the chase will be long, and achievement only at the peril of your own honour. But it seems that you shall win in the end what you have thought to have won already, and the wound in the breast will be staunched."
"Hum," said Prosper. "Now you shall tell me what I ought to do, how I ought to begin. For you know the saw--"The sooner begun, the sooner done.""
"Oh, sir,". cries she, "you shall ride forward in the name of G.o.d, remembering your manhood and the vows you made when you took up your arms." She blushed as she spoke, kindling with her thoughts.
"I will do that," said Prosper, kindled in his turn. And so he left her, and travelled all day towards Malbank Saint Thorn. He lay at night in the open wood, not far, as he judged, from Spurnt Heath, upon whose westernmost border ran Wan; there, or near by, he looked to find the Abbey.
He spent the night at least better than did Dom Galors, whose thoughts turned equally to Spurnt Heath. That strenuous man had taken the Abbot"s counsel to bed with him, a restless partner. An inordinate partner also it proved to be, not content to keep the monk awake.
Turning every traffic of his mind to its own advantage, it shook out the bright pinions of adventure over the dim corridors of Holy Thorn, and with every pulse of the ordering bell came a reiteration of its urgency. All night long, through all the task work of the next morning, the thought was with him--"By means of this woman I may be free. Free!" he cried. "I may be set up on high through her. Lord of this land and patron of Holy Thorn; a maker and unmaker of abbots to whom now I must bow my knees. Is it nothing to be master of a lovely wife? Ha, is it nothing to rule a broad fee? A small thing to have abbots kiss my hands? Lord of the earth! is this not worth a broken vow, which in any case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous, if I desired you before when you went torn and shamefaced through the mire, what shall I say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a crown, Isoult la Desiree!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la Desiree, la Moult-Desiree, and felt his head spinning.
Matins, Lauds, and Prime, he endured this obsession. The day"s round was filled with the amazing image of a crowned, hollow-eyed, tattered little drab, the mock and wonder of throngs of witnesses, appreciable only by himself as a pearl of priceless value. The heiress of Morgraunt, the young Countess of Hauterive, La Desirous, La Desiree.
Desirable she had been before, but dealing no smarter scald than could be drowned in the well of love which for him she might have been for an hour. But now his burn glowed; the Abbot had blown it red. Ambition was alight; he was the brazier. It danced in him like a leaping flame.
Certainly Prosper slept better on his side of Spurnt Heath.
At dusk the monk could bear himself and his burden of knowledge no longer. He went to look for Isoult on the heath in a known haunt of hers. He found her without trouble, sitting below the Abbot"s new gallows. She was a girl, childishly formed, thin as a haggard-hawk, with a white resentful face, and a pair of startled eyes which, really grey, had a look of black as the pupil swam over the iris. The rags which served her for raiment covered her but ill; her legs were bare, she was without head-covering; all about her face her black hair fell in shrouds. She sat quite still where she was, with her elbows on her knees, and chin between her two hands, gazing before her over the heath. Above her head two thieves, first-fruits of the famous charter, creaked as they swung in their chains. If Isoult saw Galors coming, she made no effort to escape him; when her eyes met his her brooding stare held its spell.
The monk drew near, stood before her, and said--"Isoult la Desirous, you shall come with me into the quarry, for I have much to say to you."
"Let it be said here," she replied, without moving. But he answered-- "Nay, you shall come with me into the quarry."
"I am dead tired. Can you not let me be, Dom Galors?"
"I have what will freshen you, Isoult. Come with me."
"If I must, I must."
Then he led her away, and she went tamely enough to the quarry.
There he took her by both her hands, and so held her, waiting till she should be forced to look up at him. When at last, sick and sullen, she raised her eyes, he could hardly contain himself. But he did.
"What were you doing by the Abbot"s new gallows, Isoult?"
"I would rather be there now than here. The company is more to my liking."
"You may be near enough by to-morrow, if what I have learned be true."
The girl"s eyes grew larger and darker. "Are they going to hang me?"
she asked.
"Are you not a witch?"
"It is said."
"Your mother Mald is a witch--eh?"
"Yes, she is a witch."
"And are not you? You know Deerleap--eh?"
"It is said that I do."
"And you know what must be done to witches."
"They will hang me, Dom Galors! Will they hang me by Cutlaw and Rogerson?"
"There is room for you there."
"What can they prove?"
"Pshaw! Is proof needed? Are you not a baggage?"
"I know not."
"A wanton?"
"Ah, you should know that!"
"If it depended upon me, Isoult, I could save you. But the Abbot means to make an example and set a terror up before the evil-doers in this walk of Morgraunt. What am I before the Abbot, or what is my love for you to be brought to his ears? It is doom more certain still, my dear."
"Then I shall be hanged."
"Listen to me now, Isoult. Listen close. No, leave your hands where they are; they are safer there than elsewhere. So leave them and listen close. No soul in Malbank but myself and the Lord Abbot knows of what I have told you now. Me he told this morning. Judge if that was good news for your lover"s ear!"
Isoult shivered and hung her head. Galors went on--"At the risk of everything a monk should fear, and of everything, by G.o.d, that such a monk as I am should care to win, I contended with my spiritual father.
Spare me the particulars; I got some shrewd knocks over it, but I did win this much. You are to be hanged to-morrow, Isoult, or noosed in another way. A ring is to play a part. You shall be bride of the tree or a man"s bride. I won this, and left the Abbot chuckling, for much as he knows he has not guessed that the goose-girl, the tossed-out kitchen-girl, the scarecrow haunter of the heath, should be sought in marriage. But I knew more than he; and now," he said, stooping over the bent girl,--"and now, Isoult la Desirous, come with me!"
He tried to draw her towards him, but she trembled in his hands so much that he had to give over. He began his arguments again, reasoned, entreated, threatened, cajoled; he could not contain himself now, being so near fruition. The spell of the forest was upon him. "Let Love be the master," he said, "for there is no gainsaying him, nor can cloister walls bar his way; but his flamy wings top even these. Ah, Isoult!" he cried out in his pa.s.sion; "ah, Isoult la Desiree, come, lest I die of love and you of the tree."
The girl, who feared him much more than the death he had declared, was white now and desperate. But she still held him off with her stiffened arms and face averted. She tried to cheapen herself. "I am Matt"s bad daughter, I am Matt"s bad daughter! All the t.i.thing holds me in scorn.
Never speak of love to such as I am, Galors." And when he tried to pull her she made herself rigid as a rod, and would not go.