Part 4

"Go to his aid," the wood-nymph whispered in Simon's ear, pointing to the man who was fighting for his life.

Simon shook his head doggedly, thinking of the rules of his misanthropic game. He had made up his mind to dislike mankind and womankind, and it seemed a declination from principle to help any one in peril of a paltry life.

"He would not thank me," he grumbled; "he is holding his own well enough."

Even as he spoke, however, the conditions of the struggle were suddenly altered. Again the robbers had made to rush the youth, again they had retreated, and this time the youth, quitting the bastion of his tree-trunk, charged his retreating foes, who fled swiftly before him hither and thither. In making this attack he left at his rear, unheeding, the man who had fallen, and this one, suddenly quickening from his seeming lethargy, rose to his feet directly behind the advancing knight, and struck at close quarters a murderous blow at his head with what seemed to be a short club or mace. The youth gave a groan and reeled as he turned and tried to face this unexpected onslaught, and instantly all his enemies came swarming at him again.

"Will you not help him?" Argathona cried, in fine scorn. "Then I will."

A fallen tree-trunk lay in their way; the dryad leaped upon it just as the harassed youth, stumbling under a second treacherous blow, tripped and fell, and the robbers came swooping from all quarters upon their quarry to despatch him. Argathona flung up her arms.

"Help me, help, ye forest powers," she cried, in a great voice that seemed to Simon to fill the four corners of the world.

At the awful sound the startled robbers turned from their victim and stared in terror at the white figure perched upon the stricken tree. Simon to that moment had noted no signs of rising storm, though it was no news to his experience that storms rise and fall swiftly in the land of Greece. But on that instant it seemed to him and to the confounded robbers that a fierce wind came roaring through the forest while a black cloud like a dragon swallowed the moon at one bite, drowning the wood with intolerable darkness, ripped at swift intervals with zigzags of lightning, blindingly bright. Furious volleys of thunder rolled through the blended terror of light and darkness, and the clamor of heaven was horribly mimicked on earth by a bellowing as of innumerable wild beasts, fierce citizens of the forest, disturbed in their slumbers by the sudden hubbub. Simon, frankly frightened, fell on his knees and tried to stammer a prayer, while the robbers, utterly discomfited, shrieked their fears, and turning from that figure standing preternaturally white against the blackness, fled for their rascal lives. It appeared to Simon as he knelt that the dryad high above him chanted a wild imprecation upon the fugitives which rang thus:

Chase them, wolves, but do not slay; Scare them, snakes, but do not sting; Glow-worms, guide the rogues astray; Hedgehogs, trip them as they spring Helter-skelter through the night, Dumb and deaf and blind with fright.

Though Simon deemed it an age-long time before the last sound of flying feet died away and the last words of the wood-nymph's imprecation faded into silence, yet the storm died with a suddenness only equalled by its birth. The thunder ceased to rumble, the lightning ceased to fly, the great, black dragon of cloud fell asunder dissipated into a myriad vanishing fragments, and in a quiet sky the sweet moon shone supreme again, filling the glade with brilliance. Simon staggered to his feet and made an end of his paternosters.

"That was a very pretty piece of work," he stammered, wiping the beads of sweat from his wet forehead as he turned to address the wood-nymph. The remark was intended to be a compliment, but it proved a soliloquy, for he found that he stood and spoke alone. Argathona had already quitted the tree-trunk and skimmed across the intervening grass to the field of battle. She was now bending over the wounded man. Simon followed her as quickly as he could, fearful of his own black shadow as it trailed raggedly in the moonlight. When he reached her side Simon, bending by her, peered into the rigid face of the fallen fighter. The man was, indeed, his book-reading knight of the afternoon, who lay now very still and pale in the moonlight with his eyes shut, and there was blood upon his bright hair and blood upon his colored coat. The dryad looked up imploringly at Simon with clasped hands and face strained with sorrow.

"The beautiful boy!" she sighed. "What have they done to him? I hope he is not dead. Tell me, you who are human and should understand your kind."

Simon stooped closer over the body and examined it dexterously enough. In the rough-and-tumble of his life he had had plenty of experience of wounds, and knew what to do. The heart was beating satisfactorily, and Simon nodded approval.

"Have you never seen death before?" he asked of his companion, while his big paws began to search more gently than seemed natural to them for the man's wounds.

Argathona wrung her hands.

"Never of human creature," she wailed; "but I still weep for the forest creatures, the beasts and the birds and the insects who seem so happy in their little lives."

By this time Simon had plucked open the knight's coat, and his fingers travelled dexterously over flesh that seemed womanly white and smooth in the moonlight.

"You are mighty compassionate," he grunted.

Argathona gave him a glance of pathetic reproval.

"I should be, being immortal," she answered, with a girlish dignity which was quaint in such a case.

Simon nodded silently. He had forgotten the girl's claim to immortality, but he was now very sure that she was a witch and her words did not worry him. Patiently he finished his examination of the body. A stroke aimed at the side had slipped on a buckle, causing only a gash where a hole had been hoped for. The loss of blood was not enough to account for the knight's helpless condition. Simon lifted him carefully to one side and then saw the cause of unconsciousness. The murderous blow that had been struck at the back of the knight's head had been struck at close quarters, and struck to kill. It had come pretty near to carry out its purpose, if the striking arm had been stronger.

Simon turned an encouraging countenance to the girl's grave face.

"Your knightling is not dead nor in great danger of death, though he has a nasty nick in the side that had better be bunged."

As he spoke he tore away a great piece of the youth's shirt and laid bare his side while he twisted the linen to shape a bandage.

"The worst of his business is that crack at the back of the head which has knocked him silly. It were well if we had some water."

"Let me do that," Argathona ordered, pointing to his employment. "I know how to stanch wounds. I saved the life of a stag lately that Alcibiades had wounded. Run you to the spring in the forest and bring me water."

When Argathona commanded in Argathona's woodland, Simon felt that it was for him to obey without question.

"Where is the spring?" he asked, as he rose to his feet.

Argathona drew from her girdle the myrtle-bough that she had thrust there when they began their wild race through the forest.

"Hold this so in your hand," she showed him, "and go straightly moonward, pressing it lightly between your palms. When it begins to quiver and twirl in your fingers you will know that you are near the spring. It is but a little way from here."

Simon had heard ere this of such ways of finding water, though in his country folk did the business rather with witch-hazel than myrtle; yet he had little doubt but that Argathona knew her woodland ways, and he took the bough from her hands and made at the top of his speed for the forest.

VI

LIKE UNTO ADONIS

Argathona, bending on one knee over the wounded man, lifted his shoulders with firm, supple fingers upon the other knee, and, tenderly supporting the bruised head with one hand, breathed quickly and repeatedly upon his parted lips. The breath of those who are deathless can fan the dying flame of the lamp of life till it burns again serenely. As she worked thus, tending a mortal man for the first time, touching the curling young head and the smooth young skin, unwonted tremors stirred her and unwonted fancies fumed. "If it were not for the red blood," she thought, "surely this youth might be of kin with the immortal gods. Adonis must have looked so when he lay with his life-blood dabbling the brake and reddening the petals of the roses, and widowed Aphrodite wept."

There were tears in Argathona's eyes as she thought thus, and they fell warm upon the cold face and kindled color in it, for the tears of those that are deathless quicken the flesh as the rains from heaven quicken the earth. After a little the youth opened his eyes and looked up in wonder at the beautiful, sad face that compassionated him, the beautiful body that neighbored him.

"Who are you?" he asked, faintly, wondering where he was, for his wits were still wool-gathering, and wondering why his voice sounded so weak and foolish to him, as voices sometimes sound in dreams.

"I am--" Argathona began, and faltered. She thought that she would not again tell a stranger the truth about herself and be doubted, as Simon had doubted her, so she changed her purpose a little and went on:

"I am a woman, and I live in this wood."

Rainouart struggled somewhat to get up, for it vexed his strength exceedingly to feel helpless and it fretted his courtesy to trouble a woman with such care of him. But Argathona gently laid a hand upon his breast, and for all his strength he could not resist that pressure, and she kept him pillowed on her knee. He put a hand that seemed unusually clumsy to his aching head, and then stared in amazement at his naked chest and weakly strove to claw his coat together. Argathona whispered to him very softly, and he understood her without marvelling, being unable for the moment to marvel at anything.

"Robbers set on you--wounded you."

Again Rainouart struggled to rise.

"Now I remember," he said, fiercely; and looking about him, though it hurt him much to move his head, he saw how his sword lay on the grass a-nigh him, and he made a grab for the weapon. But Argathona put her beautiful, strong arms about him, and held him thus while she whispered motherly to him, as children have whispered to their dolls since the first child played with the first mandrake:

"You must keep still; you are sorely hurt, but I have stanched the blood."

Rainouart's wits were none too muddled to forget reverence. He stooped his head and kissed the girl's hands where they met about his breast. The touch of his lips upon her seemed to sting her virgin flesh through to the pure heart, and she unclasped her hands with a little moan. Rainouart looked up at her.

"Why do you cry out? Why do you withdraw your hands? My gratitude would never offend you."

"You do not offend me," Argathona whispered, very softly, so softly that he could scarcely hear her. But he did hear her, and so hearing he now wondered, as Simon before him had wondered, how it happened that his own dear French speech should sound at all strange to him. As the girl's hands no longer restrained him, he struggled a little and sat erect, and stared into her eyes as she kneeled beside him. His troubled thoughts seemed to lapse again into a trance; surely he had strayed in the guarded garden, surely he lay in the mystical pleasance, surely he had touched with his lips the petals of the noble rose.

"What is your name?" he whispered, and she told him, and he repeated it softly, "Argathona," and found it very sweet to say and hear.

"When I kissed your hands, Argathona," he murmured, "all the pain of my wounds seemed to leave me, and I drew new life, new vigor, from the kiss. But when you withdraw your touch from me the smart returns and my head aches wearily. If you will let me kiss your hands once more I think that would surely banish pain."

He pleaded not because he dreaded to bear pain, but because he longed with all his heart to kiss her hands again, and he hoped to win her to yield through pity. He asked no more in his speech than to kiss her hands, and he asked no more in his heart. For this, though he knew it not, was his first acquaintance with the meaning of love, and his white chivalry would have died blithely for less grace than this from the loved one.

"You must not suffer pain," the girl said, looking with troubled doubt into his bright, mortal eyes. For this, though she knew it not, was her first acquaintance with the meaning of love. Then she yielded her hands to him sweetly as one who, being great, grants a favor, and granting it is glad to be humble in the granting. The young French knight took her white fingers in his and kissed them very tenderly, very courteously, and as he kissed them he looked up into her pitying eyes and longed to weep for the very keenness of the joy that filled his being. It seemed to him on the instant that he had waited through all the love-loneliness of his spring for the touch of those hands, for the regard of those eyes. Surely Lord Love had locked his heart with a golden key, to keep it as a shrine vacant till this hour and dedicated to this image.

"You have the most wonderful hands in all the world," he stammered, tremulous with a sense of intimate revelation. "Their touch yields life. But you have the most wonderful face in the world, the most wonderful eyes."

He had clean forgotten how he came there, he had clean forgotten Athens, forgotten everything except the glorious certainty that he had found the rose of the world. Argathona neared her face to his till she almost touched his cheek with her lips. She knew with the wisdom of the wood that he spoke the truth of his heart. She would have known even, if she had been wise in the wisdom of the world, from the loyalty of his voice, and she gave back the truth of her heart with the frankness of the dawn of time.

"Your hands are strong and shapely, like the hands of the gods; your eyes are bright, like the eyes of the gods; you are good to behold."

Rainouart colored, a little bashful as a gallant lad should be at the high praise of a fair girl, and tried, manlike, to put it by in spite of his wild pleasure at its sound and sense.

"So long as a man be brave, it matters little how he be formed and featured, at least so all men say, but I have heard that some ladies think otherwise." And he smiled shyly at her, hotly glad that she should think well of him, spirit and substance together glad to madness with happiness.

The dryad looked at him gravely. "Are there many mortals like this," she pondered--"so modest, so brave, so fair?" Her heart assured her that this must be the pride and idol of the time.

"Comeliness is a mark of the favor of the gods," she asserted.

Rainouart pressed her hands closely, his spirit rekindling at the exquisite contact, his soul desiring nothing better than this bright hour. Yet he wondered at her words.

"Why do you speak like a pagan?" he asked. "The gods have gone long ago."

The dryad sighed as she thought of the splendid figures riding to the twilight land. Was it yesterday?

"Ay," she sighed, "the gods have gone long ago," and she stared across the moonlit space into the blackness of the wood, and wondered what had happened to her which had changed so strangely the ancient way.

There was a little silence; mortal and immortal troubled with new thoughts. Then Rainouart made to rise. It was strangely sweet to lie there supported by this woman's arms; but Rainouart was a man and a knight, and must not presume on a fair lady's patience. So he got to his knees, and she helped him to his feet with her strength, which could have aided a greater than he; and they stood face to face in the moonlight, mortal boy and immortal girl, and to both alike the moment of mortal immortality had come. The night wind was very quiet, the wood seemed still with a kind of sacred stillness; it was as if the world were asleep and only they awake in all the world. The hearts of youth beat with the mutual pulses of a great passion.

VII

LOVE IS ENOUGH

The maid gazed at the man wistfully, a-quiver with mysterious hopes and fears.

"What god do you serve?" she faltered, her memory all alive with the divine faces and the shining forms and that calm, tragic procession to the shadowland.

Rainouart bowed his head, meekly devotional as his devout mother, and crossed himself slowly while he prayed a prayer.

"Messire Christ Jesus, who died for all men and for me, a sinner, thirteen hundred years ago. What other Lord may a knight serve? Do you take me for a follower of Mohammed?"

To Argathona neither name had any meaning. The beautiful gods her babehood knew had journeyed to the sunless land, and her mother had told her how a great voice, louder than all the winds that fill the sky, had cried abroad that great Pan was dead. She had always heard of a power mightier than the gods. That power had triumphed; she knew no more, she asked no more.

"I take you for a brave man," she said, looking him full in the face, and she looked many things that she could not say. In the conquering spell of that night of springtime his glorious youth seemed as abiding as hers, and she forgot to pity his dower of frailty or her dower of endurance, surrendering to a greater force than pity. To the man it seemed as if he, standing there holding this unknown woman's hands and drowning in this unknown woman's eyes, had learned in one noble moment the sacred secret of life, the reason why it is worth while to exist and to endure, live hardily a man's hard life, die firmly a man's inevitable death. All his spirit was at his lips as he spoke, his hands clinging to the clasp of her hands. For he knew that he had come to the crown of his life, that he had caught the clew that he was seeking, that he had found the noble rose.

"Pray God you take me for your loyal lover. My soul has lived alone for this moment, my little life has been spared for this grace." So he began, and then for the first time in all her age-long life the dryad heard the splendid, the terrible words that govern the reeling world.

"I love you," the man cried from the heart of his heart, and again, "I love you," and yet again, "I love you"--the mystical three words repeated mystically three times, as is meet in the litany of love. He would have caught her in his arms, but she held his hands fast, and for all his strength he could not pluck them away from her grasp. Joy and sorrow struggled for the supremacy of her being.

"Do you really love me, you mortal man, me whom you have never seen before this night?" she asked, with a tender pity, with a tender irony. The pity was for him, the about-to-die loving the undying; the irony was for her, that she spoke with the speech of doubt knowing with all her heart that he loved her, knowing with all her heart that she loved him.

"I am a mortal man," Rainouart answered, passionately, "as you are a mortal woman; but love is immortal, and true knights who are true lovers only think so of love. They ride and they ride and they see fair faces in lattice or orchard, and they vow the world is a pleasant place; but they pay no heed to the fair faces, and they ride on in the quest of the rose. Then at a thoughtless turn of the road they see one face and the world is heaven or hell--heaven if they win and wear the rose, hell if they may not attain to its petals. No, not so," he corrected himself, quickly, "for to love the loveliest is well whether she smile or frown, and so, come what may, it is my glory to love you, but I wish you could love me a little."

She answered in racking anguish to the rapture of the man:

"I think I could love you very dearly, but I do not think it would be wise."

"Do not mistrust me," he pleaded. "I could be nothing but loyal to my lover, loyal to the death."

As the words rang from his lips Argathona gave a great cry, and loosing her hold of him covered her face with her hands like a frightened child, and her body shook with sobs.

"Alas, to the death!" she wailed, shuddering at the gulf between them and the doom laid upon immortals to see their mortal lovers die.

Rainouart trembled; liberated from her fingers, his life seemed to ebb again furiously, the very strength her touch had given him made him the weaker at the withdrawal of that contact. His wound ran red anew, and the hurt in his head burned horridly. But he cried vehemently, catching at his breath:

"We must all die, young or old, gentle or simple; but we die in the hope of salvation, and to-day we two live, to-day I love you, to-day I pray God that you may love me."

She was stirred by his passionate enthusiasm, by the vehemence of his speech, by the earnest meaning in his eyes. Loving him, she was eager to be loved according to the simple creed of the woodland, and she tried like him to forget the unavoidable.

"Give me your love," he cried to her again. "Give me your love. Come with me into the wide world. I am Rainouart of the Rock, son of the Duke of Athens. You shall live like a queen in the sweet city."

A sudden pain tugged at the dryad's heart, and she shook her head sadly. This was not what she understood by love, to go and dwell among mortals and watch them die as summer flies die in a day.

"If I gave you my love," she said, "I could not go with you into the wide world. My life is here in the ancient wood."

Resolve ruled Rainouart's forehead with strong lines. He was so sure that this was the love of his life, and that to love like this was truly to live, that he was ready to pay his price for paradise.