Part 3

He made a step towards the girl as he spoke, with his face as red as a peony, and stretched out his big, brown hands to seize her white body. To his surprise she made no effort to evade him, and for one wild moment it was pleasure to clasp her soft body close to his; but before he had time to turn his clasp into an embrace he found himself, to his bewilderment, plucked from the ground as if he had been caught in the clutch of a whirlwind, and then in another astonishing instant he realized that the maiden had flung him from her as if his mighty mass of manhood had been no bulkier than a cradled doll, and that he was travelling rapidly through the air towards his mother earth. Then he countered the ground with a prodigious thump that seemed to squelch the breath out of his lungs and to shake every bone and strain every sinew of his body. Sick and dizzy and all of an ache he lay on his back on the grass, rigid as a man in a catalepsy, and staring in unfamiliar terror at the maiden, whose beautiful face was suddenly fierce with anger.

"You fool," she cried, "learn that I rule in this forest. I have dealt thus gently with you for this once"--Simon groaned inwardly as she said this, and wondered if he had a whole bone left in his body--"but if you vex me again I shall be tempted to do you some hurt."

Simon made an effort to move, and the effort hurt him sorely, and he marvelled at the girl's ideas of gentleness and hurting. The Olympian sternness of Argathona's brow softened a little at the sight of that supine image of misery.

"Will you promise to offend no more?" she asked, and Simon cried back at her, speaking from the very core of his heart:

"I promise."

The dryad's frown faded, her serene calm rekindled.

"You will do well to keep your word," she said, merrily, "for my sinews are knit with the vigor of the Age of Gold, and I have no need to fear the children of men."

"As to that," Simon protested, as stoutly as he could under the somewhat undignified conditions, "I have my failings, it may be, but I am an honest soldier, and I never broke my word in my life."

"Then get on your feet again," said Argathona, gently, and she reached out her hands to his, extended, and lifted him up standing as easily as if he had been a baby; and at the touch of her fingers Simon felt instantly that his blood was running anew and that the chill which gripped at his heart dissolved before the flame of life revived. He made to stretch his stiff arms, and found to his joy that he succeeded. He moved his legs this way and that with a painful relish in their obedience. It was good to find himself still all of a piece.

"Ah," he sighed, "how stiff I be! It is tedious to feel like a tree."

Argathona's brows knitted slightly, and Simon saw that he had bungled, and tried to gloss his blunder. He had no doubt now as to his companion's powers if he still questioned her narrative, and he thought it well to show respect to her alleged sylvan kinship.

"Of course, there are trees and trees--" he began to stammer, but the dryad with a whisk of her myrtle twig warned him to keep his peace, and he shut his mouth tightly. She sat comfortably down upon the turf, crossing her legs under her as a lad might, and motioned to him to take his ease. Simon gingerly lowered himself to the ground with his chin in his hand. He was not a little afraid of the amazing maid, for which he was scarcely to be blamed; but he was also heartily her admirer, for which he was wholly to be commended. She stared at him and smiled, and Simon stared at her and rubbed his head wistfully.

"Here is a wonder out of a wood," he said. "May the devil fly away with me if I know what to make of you."

"There is nothing to wonder at," Argathona answered, gravely. "I belong to the old, strong race, the kin of the gods, and the strength of the gods runs in my body though my sire was a mortal man. Also I know something of the secrets of the ancient wood. Otherwise I am like yourself, thinking the same thoughts, living the same life, sharing the same pleasures of hunger and thirst, sleep and waking, and the change of the seasons. The only difference is that there will come a time when none of these things can live for you, and that time will never come for me. I shall go on with the dawn and the sunset and the wheeling stars and the changing seasons and the perpetual years."

"The difference is a pretty big one," Simon grunted; "but let that pass."

He looked at the girl curiously; he was now quite prepared to be devoted to her, though he was also quite prepared to believe her a witch. There were witches and witches, and this seemed an honest one. But her claim to endless existence bewildered him. He admitted to himself that it would sound very pleasant if applied to his own case. It must be agreeable, he thought, to go on cheerfully eating and drinking and making love, and fighting and sleeping and gaming and riding a-horseback and experiencing all the other enjoyable processes appertaining to a strong man's life, day in and day out, year in and year out through the centuries, with never any fear of finding wine and love and pastime uninteresting or condemned to end. At least, the maid was not making game of him; she was fixed in her strange story; and, anyway, he was pledged her friend.

"There is one thing that puzzles me," he said, bluntly--"how does it happen that you, who have lived in this wood since your old friends the gods decamped from paradise, and who talk, as I should think, the jargon of ancient days, can converse with me, who remember no more than thirty summers and was born over-seas in France?"

Argathona smiled amiably at his quandary.

"It is given to us," she said, "who are kindred with the gods, to say in our speech the thoughts of all men, and to understand with our ears the thoughts of all men. When you speak I hear your meaning in the words of the woodland, and when I speak to you my meaning takes possession of you and you shape it for yourself into the usage of your familiar speech, and so it will be for me always, wherever I go."

Simon nodded. If this were so he could understand that something in her utterance which seemed alien and quaint to him. Here truly was a gift scarcely less enviable than the grace of perdurable life. Argathona interrupted his meditations.

"You have asked me many questions," she said, looking straightly at him from under level brows; "now answer some for me. Is it the manner of mortal man to make love in your fashion?"

Simon looked awkward and fumbled with his beard.

"There are many ways of making love," he confessed. "Some are more formal," he admitted, after a moment's pause.

The nymph looked thoughtful.

"Such would please me better," she said. She eyed Simon circumspectly, then questioned, suddenly, "Why do you carry that lantern?"

Simon unhooked it from his girdle and held it at arm's-length, a formidable piece of furniture for a traveller.

"There was some fellow of old time did the like for my reason--looking for an honest man or an honest woman."

The dryad smiled at memories.

"I have heard of that; it was a mad Athenian called Diogenes."

"I care not what his name was," said Simon, "but I like his humor and I follow his quest. Not that the lantern is of much use to me in the daytime, but it shows my good faith."

"Have you found no honest folk?" Argathona asked, sympathetically. Simon shook his red head.

"Never since I came to these regions of Greece," Simon protested. "There were honest folk in Rouen, or, at least, I used to think so. Alain, the armorer, he was an honest man. He made this blade," and Simon patted the stout sword at his side. "I never met with a better. But since I came to Corinth to serve the duke I have found no honest soul or body."

Argathona gave a little shiver.

"I am glad that I dwell here in the greenwood, and not with your clan."

Simon rambled on with his narrative.

"When I came to these parts I still had the bulk of a pretty little patrimony. Where is it now? Every light o' love in Corinth has filched her bit of it; every cozener with the dice has picked his share. While I was rich my friends fawned on me; when I fell poor they turned their backs, lads and lassies. I have written some rhymes on my misfortune."

He paused, hoping that the maid might ask to hear them, but as she did no such thing he resumed, plaintively:

"So now I trample this planet seeking an honest human."

"Do you hope to find such in Athens?" Argathona asked.

She was quite interested in this queer, russet-colored man, with his wild words and his wild wits--as interested as she would be if she came upon some new kind of fawn or unfamiliar moth in the forest. Simon grunted uncertainly.

"I have my doubts," he said, "though every great lord and every little lord in Attica will be there. But I do not go to Athens solely to that end. I hope to find service with the Duke of Athens, who loves, so they tell me, such stout fellows as I be."

He stretched his great arms apart as he spoke, in pride at their mighty muscles. Then, remembering how little their strength had availed him against the witchery of the nymph, he grinned a thought sheepishly. But Argathona was honestly admiring his force, and only pitying him for not being comely. They sat for a moment looking at each other, thinking their own thoughts. About them all was very still in the moonlight, silence only troubled by the wheeling of bats and the droning of insects. Suddenly from the distance came loud shouts, furious cries, and then the angry clash of steel on steel and the clattering of a horse's hoofs in furious flight.

IV

THE MYSTIC ROSE

The young prince lay in the shadow while his horse cropped at the fresh grass, and he read the _Romance of the Rose_, and as he read it seemed as if he, too, lay there dreaming with the dreamer, and that all the amazing pageant of the tale moved before him as the figures on the woven arras of a great room move, stirred by the wind. For he, like the teller of the tale, seemed to wake from sleep on a May morning and to stray into the meadows to hearken to the matins of the birds. Like the dreamer, he wandered over flower-starred fields beside a river broader and shallower than the Seine till he came to the garden and the castle whose walls were adorned in gold and colors with the hideous images of Hate, Felony, Villany, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Eld, Hypocrisy, and Poverty; and it seemed to him that after he had sated his awed fancy with the study of those strange devices, he, too, sought if by any means he might get into the garden. Then in this waking sleep he found at last a small wicket, and he smote thereon, and the gate was opened to him by a damsel who told him that her name was Idleness, and that she was the friend of the master of the castle and garden, whose name was Mirth, and she gleefully bade him enter, and he obeyed and found himself straightway in so fair a garden that he deemed himself to have arrived at the earthly paradise. His dream spirit, following fast on the dainty heels of Idleness, came to where apple-faced Mirth and his jolly company, fair men and fair women, entertained themselves with song and dance.

But while he was with that genial congress and sharing in their sports, the God of Love came over the grass with Sweet-Looking by his side, and Sweet-Looking carried two bows, one crooked and knotty, the other even and comely, and two quivers, each holding five arrows, and the arrows in the quiver in the right hand were Beauty, Simplesse, Franchise, Company, and Fair-Semblance, and those in the left hand were the arrows of Pride, Villany, Shame, Wanhope, and New-Thought. Then the dreamer fled away from these presences, and as he went the God of Love dogged his footsteps with the fair bow and the fair arrow in his hand, and the dreamer came to that clear fountain where Narcissus drowned himself for self-love. In the waters of this fountain the dreamer beheld the reflection of a rose-bush all on fire with roses, and the desire of that rose-bush filled his heart so hotly that he would not have parted with one bud thereof, might he hope to gain so much, for the city of Paris or the city of Pavia. And while he hungered for the rose, the God of Love came up with him and pierced him with the five arrows of Beauty and Simplesse and Franchise and Company and Fair-Semblance, and with each wound he became more and more Love's servant and vassal, and then Love locked his heart with a golden key and left him with but one desire in that shut heart, the desire to obtain the noble rose.

And so in his dream the youth pursued his adventure till he came to where the rose-bush flourished and found it guarded by all manner of evil passions, who grinned defiance at him and knotted their gnarled hands to make a barrier to hold him from the lovely, lonely rose. And even as he despaired of success Queen Venus came to his aid--Venus with roses in her hair and roses at her feet, a beautiful, alluring presence, and cheered him with sweet smiles and urged him with sweet words to complete the achievement of the rose. Line by line and page by page the story of the wonderful book seemed to tell itself over in living pictures to his dreaming eyes, and the gracious women with the gracious names courtesied to him and kissed their pink finger-tips, and the evil faces mowed at him, and behind and beyond the fair faces and the foul he could see the glorious flower that he longed for. And he thought that Venus led him by the hand till he was close to the flower, and gave him leave to kiss it, and he stooped and kissed the rose, and his blood ran fire and his spirit was sanctified.

Then, with a shiver, Rainouart woke, and realized that he was lying alone by the highway to Athens, and that the day had darkened and the shadows were falling, and that his horse was fretting impatiently at his tether, and that the book had fallen from his relaxed fingers, and that he was very much alone on the earth. And he wished with all his unblemished soul that he could slip from the world he lived in, from the world where he loved no woman, into that kingdom of dreams, and achieve through all impediments and obstacles the love of his unknown lady. Wishing thus with a deep sigh, and realizing the vanity of the wish with a deeper, he thrust the book back into his bosom, and unfastened his horse and mounted him and turned his head towards Athens, letting him go at his own gait. Muffled in his melancholy musings, he suffered the bridle to drop on his horse's neck and rode with folded arms, meditating upon the power of poesy, and wondering if it were truly well for him that it had pleased Heaven to make his spirit so unhappily different from the spirits of the light-hearted knights of his father's court, who loved and were content, or who loved and were discontent, but who were always blithe of spirit and seemed to ask nothing better of fortune.

As he thus jogged and mused, trusting to his horse to find its way to the city, suddenly from the shadow of the trees that bordered the white highway came leaping from either side menacing figures, and the dusk was troubled with the gleam of naked steel. And then, before the prince could realize what had happened, his horse gave a great scream of pain, for one of the skulkers had wounded the animal in the side, aiming to hamstring it, and missing his mark in the dusk and flurry. The horse reared, and the prince, taken unawares, lost his stirrups. But Rainouart was too skilful a rider to be thrown, for instinctively he gripped the sides of his horse with his thighs and caught at the crupper, and if he had chosen could have escaped from his assailants easily enough astride of the galloping steed. But it was not in him to avoid danger thus or to fly from any odds; so, leaning forward, he caught on the bridle and brought the frightened animal to a moment's stand-still, and then deftly swinging himself from the saddle alighted on his feet on the highway. In another moment his sword was out to meet the swords of his antagonists, who rushed on him, a hurly-burly of shouts and swords, and the quiet of the night was broken by the fierce clash of steel on steel and the thundering of the frightened horse's hoofs as he sped along the highway towards Athens.

V

THE SONG OF THE FOREST

When the noise of the clash of steel and the clatter of flying hoofs echoed through the greenwood, Argathona leaped to her feet and the warm color fled from her face. Simon, flatling on the grass, indifferent to a noise the cause whereof was shrewdly guessed by him, thought the girl more than ever akin in her pallor to those old stone statues he had lightly noticed in that garden of pleasure in Byzantium. At that time he decided easily that the living women who served his squandering humor in that garden were much more fair than those ladies of old time whom the unknown sculptor had hoped to commemorate. Now rolling the problem over carefully through somewhat sluggish processes of thought, he began to hold it little less than reasonable to change his mind.

"What is the matter?" the dryad cried, pressing her hands against her breasts and widening her eyes, catlike, as she peered through the moony gloom of the wood. Her attitude in her companion's eyes was that of a wild creature troubled, and alert to pounce.

Simon rolled lazily on the grass and gave a self-satisfied snigger.

"I met a loon by the highway at the edge of the forest poring on a foolish book, and his folly vexed me. Then I 'countered a covey of thieves in the thick of the trees and told them of my blockhead coming. From what we hear I take it that he has fallen into their fingers. Belike they are cutting his throat at this present."

He chuckled at the ugly thought. Argathona turned upon him a pale, set face and blazing eyes of rage.

"You will not suffer this!" she cried, indignant; "you are a strong man."

Simon laughed again, a fat laugh, and aired his cynical philosophy.

"Marry, will I!" he answered. "Every man oaf that kills another man oaf rids me the world of one pestilent fellow, and gives an honest man more elbow-room."

Simon had angered the dryad much before, but now he angered her more. Probably he had never heard of Medusa or he might have believed that he beheld her. Argathona's adorable face was terrible to behold in its wrath, and her tresses in the moonlight gleamed like golden serpents. The scorn in her eyes might well have scared his bulk to stone.

"Oh, you are hateful, you humans," she protested, with hands uplifted to heaven; and then she shrilled in a voice there was no resisting, "Run to his help."

Very reluctantly, for his tumble still irked him, Simon found himself obediently scrambling to his feet. The moment he stood erect Argathona clutched hold of his right hand with her left, and in another instant she had started to run in the direction from which the clangor came. Simon would have liked to resist, but he might have liked equally well to be proclaimed emperor of the East for any self-satisfactory result his wishes were likely to have. His strong right hand was a helpless prisoner in the grip of the girl's white fingers, and his limbs seemed only to obey the volition communicated to them by her swift pulses. Whether he liked it or whether he did not--and indeed he knew very well that he did not--he was scampering at the top of his speed beside the smoothly running maiden. Oh, the appalling rapidity of that race through the forest! Simon, for all his bulk, had ever been counted swift of foot among his fellows, but he had never known till that moment what it truly meant to move swiftly. His hand captured in the irresistible grasp of Argathona, the big man bounded along through the alleys and over the glades of the forest trying to keep pace shoulder to shoulder with the flying maid. It was like being tied to the tail of a comet and careering through space; or, rather, it reminded Simon's homely fancy of a dog he had once seen tied to a farmer's wagon when the farmer's horse had bolted, covering ground in reluctant hurry with trailing paws and tail. It seemed to him as if his legs no longer touched the firm earth, but floated behind him foolishly, swimming in the air, while his companion swept quicker than the wind through the interminable avenues of the wood. That frenzied flight was like the worst part of an ill dream, but it was an ill reality, and Simon's bulk suffered wofully. His heart was strained like a swollen wine-skin, the sweat rained from his aching body, there was not so much breath left in his lungs as would blow a single hair from the beard of a seeding dandelion; it was death in life to travel at that pace. After what seemed to Simon an eternity of breakneck journeying, they swept into a clearing of the forest fringed at the foot by the white highway. In that clearing, as in a theatre, Simon saw a youth with his back to a tree engaged gallantly in steel-play against a group of dusky figures that came at him by rushes and fell off again before the steady sweep of his long sword. Simon's breath and senses came back to him like a trick. He saw that the man so vehemently attacked and so shamefully outnumbered was defending himself valiantly, and he thought better of bookworms from that instant. As he watched the craft of single man against many, the assailants gave ground, and one of their number fell to the earth like a log and lay there loggish. The man attacked had a breathing span, and waited watchful with his weapon poised.