Chapter VIII: Part 8

Long afterwards, happily settled in Rouen, Simon, when he thought over the events of that whirling hour, used to remind himself that then, for the first time in his life, he devoutly gave God thanks for having made him so strong. In those after days in peaceful Rouen, he knew the cause of the catastrophe. The subtle genius of Fernand Ximenes had prepared an amazing trap for the Athenian army. He had turned aside the current of the river Cephissus into the cornfields of the Theban plain, and so flooded them, the quagmire thus created being completely concealed by the green standing corn. It was into this swamp that Duke Baldwin had ridden to his death, and it was in this swamp that Simon was now to struggle for his life and for the life of his lord.

Now when in an age-long instant Simon saw how things stood, and how certain were the Athenian chivalry to perish before the eyes of their enemies in that slough and snare, he caught at the bridle of Rainouart's horse, so that though the beast trampled and stumbled sinking in the mud, it could at least go no farther.

"In God's name," Rainouart cried at him, "why do you hold me back? Ride on. Athens, Athens!"

He strove hotly to urge his struggling horse farther into the field of carnage, but Simon would not have it so.

"My lord," he shouted--for the din was so great with the neighing of frightened horses and the cries of dying men that it was hard for a voice to prevail above it even in a neighbor's ear--"my lord, all is lost; we are all trapped rabbits; turn your rein and we may escape."

Rainouart turned on him in a red rage of despair.

"You are mad," he screamed. "We can ride and die with our fellows," and he gave a heavy groan.

"You can do nothing," Simon answered. "Come with me if you would ever see the greenwood again and the face of your girl."

"A coward's call," Rainouart shouted. "Good-bye, love. Athens, Athens!" and again he strove to urge his horse a little farther in the sucking sludge. But the horse could scarce stir for all his plunging, and though Simon's hand was still on the bridle, it was not Simon's hand that stayed advance.

"Few men have called me coward with comfort to themselves," Simon grumbled, inwardly. "Yet I will take it from this man for the maid's sake, and save him if I may. This quarrel is none of mine, and I care not a rap for Athens, and it argues me no dastard to fly from a hopeless fight."

Nimbly the thoughts skipped through his brainpan, but now Rainouart, seeing Simon's hand still on his bridle, menaced him with his sword, and shrieked at him through the din that he would kill him if he did not let go his hold. Simon's thoughts were still furiously busy, furiously swift, and they ran to this intent: "Since you think it a coward's part to fly, then you were a coward in flight. But if I, that feel no shame in escaping from such a shambles, pluck you hence willy-nilly, all is well."

By now Rainouart, beside himself with wrath at sight of such a massacre, had lifted up his sword to strike at Simon, but Simon did not give him time to strike. Swift as an arrow Simon's right arm straightened, and heavy as a blacksmith's hammer Simon's right hand, a huge and cruel fist in steel, delivered the young prince a giant's blow upon his helmed head. Under that mighty stroke Rainouart's head rattled in its iron case as a kernel rattles in a nut. Courage and consciousness alike were silenced, and Simon caught in his arms a senseless man as Rainouart reeled helpless from his saddle.

"It was high time to be making up our minds," Simon grunted, as he addressed himself to the terrible attempt to extricate his companion and himself from their desperate peril.

He leaped off his horse on to the squashy earth, and, though his great weight drew him deep over ankles into the loathsome slush, he was nearer to the edge of the terror than the main of the cavalry, and better able to move and act. With carnage raging ahead of him, Simon, as coolly as if he had been in a tent at a tournament, stripped most of the mail from the body of his unresisting lord, taking care to leave him his sword girded about his middle. Then, with a like composure and a like rapidity, he ripped the armor from his own limbs, and, picking up Rainouart from the slough where he lay senseless, flung him on to his shoulder as easily as he might have lifted a woman. Even in that moment, however, he showed his campaigning spirit. Knight or no knight, Simon had a fine appreciation for the merits of a ripe old wine, and, as fighting was ever hungry work, he had not thought it beneath his new dignity to make a filled wallet and a leather bottle of red wine part of his equipment. Now he snatched both from his saddle-bow and hooked them to his belt before beginning on his desperate enterprise of escape from the mouth of the pit.

The mouth of the pit was like the mouth of hell. There were little lanes of oozy earth running in all directions behind him, green with trampled corn and red with Frankish blood. In front of him the bog he had crossed spluttered and gurgled, and across its treacherous surface he essayed, at all adventure, to reach some firmer soil. Up to this time Simon's doings had passed unchallenged. All around him the morning was made hideous by the screams of the dying and the shrieks of the triumphant Catalans as they drove home their pitiless knives, and knight after knight of those that had been the glories of Duke Baldwin's court went unprepared on the path to paradise. If any of the enemy noticed Simon at his work they may, seeing one man stripping the armor from another, have taken him heedlessly for one of themselves, who, having slain, was prompt to plunder. But now some five or six of the Catalan stabbing rabble, having worked ahead of their fellows, and seeing a man with another man on his shoulders wading through blood and mud towards the dry land, where the main strength of the Athenian army was still standing, came rapidly to head him off, running quickly and securely on the ridges familiar to them that divided the different fields of wheat and barley, or wading through the bog itself with ease in their nearly naked condition.

They chose their prey unwisely, for Simon had his great sword bare in his hand, and, as the rascals came at him, Simon, wielding his terrible weapon, struck off head after head of his assailants till none were left to face him, and then made use of their bodies as convenient stepping-stones to help him a little farther to his desired haven, while such others as were tempted to join in the chase, seeing the havoc he wrought upon their comrades, turned with alacrity to less-resisting victims.

Little by little, inch by inch, through what seemed an eternity of effort, Simon struggled with his burden, every muscle of his great body strained, every vein in his great body throbbing as he strove inch by inch to gain a firmer foothold. At last, with the shrieks of the dying and the cries of the triumphant well behind him, he felt his heels tread upon a firmer foothold. A little more, and, with the sweat raining off him like a deluge, he staggered to sound earth, and stood dripping and stained and aching, but free. He paused for a moment to draw breath and to see what lay before and behind him. The view either way was disastrous for the future of Athens. Behind him, as it seemed, every man of the gorgeous company that had ridden with Duke Baldwin from Athens that morning had fallen a victim to the cunning and the fury of the Catalans. Before him the bulk of the Athenian army was by now in ignoble flight towards the city. Dismayed by what it saw, puffed by a panic terror and spurred by a conviction that the Catalans must be irresistible, the war-used army of Duke Baldwin fell asunder like a pack of frightened children. The road to Athens was free for the Catalans to march on; the city itself was free for the Catalans to deal with as they pleased.

Not far from where Simon now stood, a great war-charger wandered quietly and bit unconcernedly at the sweet grass. Doubtless it had unhorsed its rider in the first struggle in the concealed wash, and had made its way back again instinctively to the firm soil it had just quitted. Simon, still carrying his unconscious load, advanced towards the horse, holding out his hand, and trying to speak to it caressingly, and it startled him as he did so to find what a thin thread of a voice came from between his burning lips.

The horse did not start or shy, but went on cropping the grass unconcernedly until Simon was close beside it, and then, with no show of fear, it allowed Simon to seize its bridle. In another moment Simon was astride the saddle with the young prince lying limp on the saddle-bow. In yet another he had turned the great horse's head to the west, and was making at the best speed he could compel for the woodlands.

XXVI

THE ANCHORITE

In a waste and desolate place of the Eleusinian wood, aloof alike from highway and byway, there stood a little shrine, with a little hut hard by it. The shrine was rudely shaped of heavy stones, piled one upon another with scant skill but with great pains, evidently the handiwork of an untrained but persistent artificer. All day the shrine enclosed a goodly image in wrought silver of our Lord upon the tree, the which image was always carried reverently at nightfall within the shelter of the hut. This hut was the habitation of an anchorite who had dwelled there for many years in little less than absolute solitude, and the place where he abode so lonely was reputed of great sanctity. The travellers were rare who passed that way by mischance, for it neighbored no pathway leading directly anywhere, and was far from the beaten path of trade or travel or use. But such as, passing, paused and prayed before the shrine that sheltered the silver image were wont to aver that they renewed their journey with a strange exaltation of the spirit and exhilaration of the flesh.

The beauty and the value of the image had, according to country-side gossip, on more than one occasion tempted the cupidity of thieves, but each essay to steal the sacred emblem had resulted in the discomfiture of the would-be plunderers. For on each occasion the hermit, whom the robbers hoped to take unawares abed and asleep, issued from his dwelling as the enemies came creeping up, and made such strange manifestations of physical strength and spiritual influence as effectually scared the sacrilegious rascals into flight. Now there was no thief in Athens bold enough to renew the enterprise, and the holy man was left to his loneliness, while weeks and even months passed without a living human creature passing by his hut. This loneliness seemed to be to the liking of the ancient man.

No one knew who the hermit was, and those few who ever had speech with him and sought to question him gained little by their pains. Even Duke Baldwin fared no better than the rest. For Duke Baldwin once rode that way by chance, a-hawking on a summer day, and some one of his company telling him of the recluse, the duke condescended to halt for a moment and hold speech with the holy man. But he found that his questions won him answers unsatisfactory and enigmatical, and that even the pompous announcement of his title and state had no more effect than to bring a faint smile to the thin lips of the hermit. So Duke Baldwin rode away in something of a huff, and spoke severely of recluses for some time afterwards.

It was believed that the hermit came from abroad; it was believed that he was exceedingly aged; it was believed, no one quite knew why or wherefore, that in a distant past he had been neither hermit nor holy; and it was whispered by a few beneath their breath on winter evenings, when there was leisure to loll by the fire and talk gossip, that the stranger had practised in his youth the black art and had been an accomplished sorcerer. Whatever the old man had been, and whencesoever he had come, there could at least be no doubt of his present sanctity. He fasted, vigilled, prayed, macerated his nature, lacerated his flesh, read on the Great Book till far into the night, and was at his devotions in the open at the earliest coming of the day, be the weather fair or be the weather foul. The few who ever saw him found in his reverent features no trace of dissatisfaction with his lot, and Sir Jaufre de Brabant, who rode with Duke Baldwin on the occasion when Duke Baldwin spoke with the hermit, declared that the anchorite had the peacefullest face for an old man that he had ever beheld.

On the morning of the day when slaughter reigned in the distant Theban plain, the hermit was sitting in the open air after his first devotions, quietly conscious of the freshness of the air and the color of the hour. He was busy in scattering the larger part of his scanty meal as a pasture for a multitude of birds that fluttered and hopped around him, and chirped and twittered, and sometimes, to his pathetic consternation, battled among themselves as they scrambled for the spoil. "My little brothers," he began, the phrase of St. Francis in his mind, as he observed with sorrow the contest of one large bird with three smaller ones for the solace of a single crumb. But even as he began to speak he became aware that his familiar solitude was invaded. A girl was coming towards him down the slope, a girl tall, stalwart, blue-eyed and yellow-locked, a girl with naked arms and legs, in a kirtle of white stuff. Though the girl came running rapidly towards him over the grass, the birds a-nigh him showed no signs of disturbance at the stranger's coming, but picked and chirruped as unconcernedly as if they were still alone in their timidity with their ancient friend.

It was Argathona who came thus upon the old solitary and his untroubled birds. The moon was still shining when she gained the shelter of her forest on the night of her flight from Athens, and she made at once for the cave where she had so often lain through the ages, her cave in the heart of the wood. There she hid the golden apple, and there she stripped off her male attire and clothed herself in her woman's weeds, according to the old wont. Then she lay down on a couch of fern and slept the dreamless sleep of the immortals that have no need to double their little lives with false seeming. Indeed, she was very weary of the world of men, and wished to forget it and all that belonged to it, save only her lover, who she was very sure must come to her soon in the woodland.

Being of the immortals, she had her will, and awoke refreshed and free of the contamination of the city. But yet her mind was troubled because of her lover and her longing for him, and though she knew that his hurt was nothing, and though she knew that he was fated to escape from danger till he obeyed her call to the woodland, she was conscious for the first time in her young-old life of the length of a long day. She wandered in the forest, visiting all the haunts and hollows, grottos and thickets, that she loved, talking with beast and bird and insect, every creature of the wood. But always in her divine heart she stifled the human desire for her lover, and that day of late spring lagged tardier in his passage than ever yet day of spring had travelled.

Now when she had slept again through the same sweet oblivion, and had wakened to greet a new day, she found her spirit so troubled with unfamiliar regrets and with unwonted fears that there suddenly came upon her a strange sense of loneliness, such as she had never known before, and a wish for the wisdom of another. And even as she wished, there came into her mind the thought of the hermit of whom her lover had spoken to her on the night of their first meeting. She knew, indeed, that such an one dwelt in the confines of the forest, unheeded by her. She did not remember when he came there; he was no more to her than the distant shepherds and yet more distant citizens. But since her lover had urged her to come with him to visit this ancient stranger, her troubled heart inclined towards him, and she resolved to seek him out, she scarce knew why, if it were not that perchance she might speak to him of her lover. Thus it came about that the hermit beheld her descending the slope, what time he was feeding his birds.

As Argathona approached the ancient and saw that he was aware of her coming, she gave him good-morrow in her sweet, clear voice, and the old man, looking steadfastly upon her, thought her indeed the loveliest creature that he had ever seen, even in days when his eyes were daily familiar with loveliness.

"Good-morrow, daughter," he said, gently. "Of what kin are you that are not of my kind?"

Argathona marvelled that the glamour of the woodland could not prevail against the old man.

"Why are you so wise, father," she asked, "that you seem to know what no others have known?"

"Daughter," answered the hermit, "you speak to me with a speech that is not spoken of men, and yet I understand you, and when I speak to you, you understand my tongue though it is unlike yours. Also the birds have no fear of you, the shy birds that fly from a shadow or a sigh."

"Why should the birds fear me," asked Argathona, "that have never hurt living thing? And who has given you the gift to know that I speak the speech of the gods?"

The old man turned, and, going towards the shrine, knelt for a moment before the image of the Redeemer. Then he rose again and faced the girl.

"My Lord and yours," he said, pointing to the crucifix, "has granted me to see and know the things of this world as they truly are. Time was when my eyes were blinded by pride and my heart was big with evil, but the time has been, and I, long dead to the world, wait in patience for the hour of my true translation."

Argathona pointed to the figure on the cross, which she was looking at with a childlike curiosity.

"Is that your Lord?" she questioned, gently. She remembered that she had seen kindred images at Athens, and that Simon had told her hurriedly how they made part of the new faith that had usurped the ancient rule. But she had paid them little heed, being so busy on her own purposes. Now, however, in the silence of the lonely woodside, the image to which its guardian paid so profound a reverence seemed to assume a new significance. So, "Is that your Lord?" she asked.

"Your Lord and mine," the old man answered, "and the Lord of all the souls living in the world."

Argathona looked from the image to the old man, and from the old man again to the image. If that face in its beauty presented the features of a god, why was that god so slaughtered? Why was the brow of divinity crowned with a crown of thorns? For the first time since she passed into the world of men, Argathona felt herself in the presence of something that was higher than herself and her kindred, and for the first time, she knew not why, she felt abashed and astray.

"I know little of the world of men," she faltered. "Few and bitter have been the hours I passed among them, and in those few hours I heard little speech of any lord of the world, though, indeed, I can remember seeing images like unto this to which men paid a kind of reverence, though not with that joy and humility wherewith we of the woodland reverenced our gods. Your Athens seemed only to care for laughter and banquets, and the making of false love, and the waging of false war, and from first to last I heard little speech of this Lord of the world, save when now and then one strengthened an oath with His name. Will you tell me of Him, for of Him I am ignorant?"

The old man saw that he had to deal with a daughter of simplicity that was yet no simpleton. So he addressed her with all gentleness, as a father to a child.

"Yours must have been a strange life," he said, "if the story of our Lord be strange to you. Tell me first your tale, my daughter."

Then Argathona told him her story, even as she had told it to Simon of Rouen in the woodlands such a little while ago. Then she told of all that had happened since, of her encounter with the wounded knight that proved to be the young Prince of Athens, and of their plighted loves, and of the treachery of Esclaramonde, and of her visit to Athens and what came of it, and of her resolve to wait in the greenwood till her true-love came to find her. While she spoke the old man listened in silence, and though there was much in her story to marvel at, yet in his eyes there was no signal of disbelief, and the hope burned hotly in his heart that it might be vouchsafed to him to save this spirit. When Argathona had told her story he turned to her, and his eyes were vessels of pity and his voice was the promise of charity. Gently he bade her sit by him on the grass beneath the image of silver, and tenderly he bade her hearken to the words he had to say. And Argathona obeyed him and sat by him, watching his face and feeding on his words in silence.

Then the old man told her the story of the Redeemer. He told of the prophecy and the fulfilment, the angel and the birth, of the cruelty of Herod the king, and the flight, and the shining of the star, and the coming of the wise, and the worship of the babe in the manger. He told of the going to Jerusalem, and of the child amid the doctors, and the growth in glory; of the meeting with John the Baptist, and the temptation through Satan, and the many miracles, the changing of water into wine, the walking on the water, the feeding of the multitude, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. He told of the danger of the Master, and the treason of Judas, and the last supper, and the passion in Gethsemane, and the trial before Pilatus. He told of the crucifixion. He told of the resurrection.

Argathona sat by the side of the old man in the quiet of the hill-side and hearkened and wondered, and ever as he spoke she seemed to hear far off in the woodlands the voices of the old gods complaining. And the hours waned, and the sacred tale went on, in the solitude of the forest. Far away to the east a great massacre had taken place in the Theban plain, and the levies of Baldwin were flying like sheep on the road to Athens. But no noise of the killing, no echo of the flight came to trouble the ancient and the maid in their business of telling and hearing the mystery of the redemption.

When he had made an end, when the lid of the sepulchre had rolled back and the apparition of the Master had been manifest to the apostles, the ascetic looked at Argathona and saw that her eyes were pools of tears. Then she asked him, sadly, if he had been by when this tragedy came to pass.

"Nay," answered the ancient, "all this happened thirteen hundred years ago"--but he saw that she did not understand him when he said this--"and yet, in a sense, I am one of the Lord's apostles. For there has been a head of the faith ever since from that day to this, and will be to the end, and the opening of the heavens and the yawning of the pit. And in the fulness of time it pleased the Lord to uplift the humble, so that they who had been poor fisherfolk and scriveners, and the like, became rulers of the Christian world. Wherefore, in my turn, Heaven made me the greatest prince in the world. Great kings of great kingdoms, mighty emperors of mighty empires, looked up to me as to their master, and I spoke to them as a school-master speaks to his pupils, as a tyrant speaks to his slaves. For when I lived in the world, who have long left the world, I sat in the seat of St. Peter in Rome, and I held the keys of heaven and hell, and men called me by the name of Boniface the Seventh. But it pleased God to punish me for my arrogance and my pride, and the King of France compassed my destruction, and his partisans made to slay me, and wellnigh did me to death, but my servants saved me when I was left for dead and hid me in a little house. In my sufferings I repented of my sins, and resolved to expiate them in a life of piety. So I caused it to be blown abroad that I was dead that I might escape the vengeance of my enemy, even Philip the Fair, and so live to redeem my soul. Wherefore I journeyed hither, to the country where Paul preached, and here have I lived these many years, daily drawing, as I trust, a little nearer to the desired end, and here when the Lord calls me I look to die. Because I have sinned and suffered in my past days of wickedness I am sick with pity now for all who sin and suffer in the world, and if I could I would help you, my daughter."

Argathona marvelled at his speech and at the strange things he told her, and though she did not fully understand the import of much that he said, she understood that he was good and that he meant her well. Then the old pope asked the pagan maiden what she thought to do when her lover came to her, and she answered him that she and her lover would live forever in the greenwood. Then the old pope raised his hand in warning, and his voice was sad and stern as he told her that this thing could not be. If her tale were true, and she were indeed one of the old people permitted by the providence of God to dwell undying upon earth, such grace was now given to none other in the world, so that within a little while her lover must needs die and she be left alone.

Now the renewal of this assurance stabbed at Argathona's heart, and she knelt at the old man's feet and besought him, asking if there were no way by which her gift of abiding youth and enduring life could be given to a mortal. Boniface answered her that there was no such way, though poets had dreamed of a fountain of youth which blessed those that drank with renewed youth and length of years. But no such fountain existed in the world. Then Argathona began to weep, remembering her mother's sorrow, and seeing its renewal for herself, and for the anguish in her eyes the solitary strove to comfort her.

"I cannot give your lover endless life in this world," he said; "but I can give you the life of a mortal, with its grace beyond the grave." When Argathona stared at him wide-eyed in wonder, he told her that if she would embrace the true faith and be baptized a Christian, in that moment her birthright of immortality would depart from her and her gift of endless youth, and she would become a mortal woman with all a woman's cares and sorrows and a woman's certain death. He told her that if she did this her beauty would fade from her year by year, and ugly age would creep upon her, with many aches and pains in its company, till her time came to pass away. Then he painted the joys of paradise, and the fellowship of the saints and angels, and the endless pleasure of the elect. But only by baptism and acceptation of the burden of death could she hope to be happy with her lover, here for a little while, and hereafter forever.

Argathona mused a little while nursing her chin in the hollow of her hand, and after musing rose and thanked the anchorite gravely and discreetly for what he had told her, and so bade him farewell.

"I will abide for a while in my forest," she said, "and think upon these things that you have told me, and if it prove that my spirit shall see with your eyes, and my heart shall speak with your voice, then I will come to you again."

So she rose and went her way up the mountain path into the forest, and the old pope knelt at the feet of the Crucified and prayed.

XXVII

THE DREAM OF ARGATHONA

When Argathona left the ancient and pursued her homeward path, the fervor of the day was on the wane, and the sky flamed as with the conflagration of a hero's funeral pyre. The west was a medley of reds and yellows, peach color, gold color, rose color, copper color, orange color. All the splendid metals fused in that limbec; all the luxurious fruits and flowers wantoned in that garden. The sun had fallen behind the dark clouds that girdled the horizon; he had vanished as a king might vanish through dark, swiftly falling curtains, but his glittering retinue still lingered in the Occidental antechamber, brilliant in the liveries of their imperious king. High in heaven the moon swam in a space of unnamable, unthinkable sweetness; it was no more than a half moon, and showed like a shield held sideways when a knight rides down the lists. Far away the sea slumbered, steel-blue like a knight's sword, and its large, noiseless waves suggested the easy breathing of some fearful force asleep, and sleeping, lovely in its peace.

Argathona paused on the crest of a ridge and gazed in adoration at the majesty of the dusk. It seemed to her as if she could never weary of looking on such loveliness, and her heart grew cold at the new turn of her thoughts. Must she, indeed, set a term to her delight in life, to the joy of the dawn and the noon and the even and the night, joys renewable to her for ever and ever? She could not understand what it meant to say farewell to the sunlight and the moonlight and the stars, to be no longer a child of the bright earth, to fade away as her mother's essence had faded away, to live and love, and then, in a breath, to live and love no more. Faces of fear seemed to gibber at her through the tree-trunks, the hands of anguish seemed to clasp at her throat as if to strangle her; for the first time she felt and trembled at the horror of the forest. With a cry of pain she turned from the sunset and plunged into the wood, and made for her resting-place in the heart of the groves. There she flung herself upon the turf, and above her the sky was gray with stars, and, sobbing, she sought and found sleep.

So Argathona lay asleep in the greenwood, and for a wonder Argathona dreamed a dream. She knew in her sleep that she was in the spot where she lay, in that hollow place in the heart of the old forest where always, since her babyhood, she had loved best to linger. Here in the summer days it was sweet to lie awake and see the sunbeams dapple the grass with shadows, or to be lulled to slumber by the droning of the bees. Here in the summer nights it was sweet to lie awake and peep through the branches at the stars, or to be guided by the silence into the region of sleep. But now, in this unwonted dream of hers, she thought that all the winds of all the world were blowing softly through the lanes and alleys and avenues of the wood, and she believed that she, sleeping, stirred in her sleep to hear, and as she hearkened, it was as if the wailings of the winds grew stronger, till they took the tone of many differing sounds, as the beating of the wings of monstrous birds, and the galloping of huge horses, and the straining of great sails at sea. And as she, in her vision, lay and listened to the cunning of the wind, she was made aware that the place where she rested shone with a marvel of faces that she had not seen since she was a dryad child, and she felt that her wood was peopled once again with the presences of the gods of Greece.

She saw them all about her, between the trees and upon the grass, moving upon her like a circle of flakes of white fire, and at first the phantasms seemed to flicker as flame does, inclining this way and that, waxing and waning, but ever coming closer. Suddenly they stood very still, and it was as if she saw clearer and the flamy shapes took substance, and she knew that she was surrounded by the company of the Olympians, and that they showed as she had seen them long ago in her babyhood ere they rode to the hollow land.

Now while Argathona gazed in awe at the celestials, it appeared to her in her vision that behind these mightiest there congregated a throng of forms filling all the spaces of the wood as far as she could see, and she knew these to be the fellowship of the ancient faith. There clustered the lesser gods, the domestic gods, and the sylvan gods, the divinities of winds and clouds and waters, the beautiful sisters of the dooms and the seasons, and the charities and the arts, and the grim deities of the underworld, and the uncouth creatures that dwelled beyond the realm of night, and the demi-gods, that were men and were uplifted. Argathona beheld them all in a single glance, for all their number, each one individual and familiar, as if no other godlike thing waited there and watched in the moonlight, and yet they blended together even as the moonbeams blended. And now she thought as she lay there, sleeping yet waking, that the eyes of all the Olympians, and the eyes of the myriads beyond, were fixed upon her with a look of entreaty and a look of grief. And the ears of her sleep were quickened, and she heard the eternals speak to her one after one.

The first to speak was Zeus, the all-father, launcher of the levin. His hair was wreathed with a chaplet of oak-leaves, and his right hand grasped a staff upon whose head an eagle perched that fluttered its wings as if about to fly and stared around with fierce, unblinking eyes. And Zeus, the commander of the clouds and the tyrant of the thunder, spoke to Argathona, and said:

"Deathless daughter of a divine mother, do not desert your mother's people and your birthright, the gift of your kin. For though we no longer abide in Greece, you remain, and we may yet return. Wherefore be faithful to the old faith of the fruitful earth and await the coming of your kindred."

So Zeus, the all-father, spoke, and his face was compassionate and sad, and the eagle craned its head towards the sleeping girl and clapped its angry wings. The next to speak was Hera, consort of the monarch of the gods. She wore a queenly crown, and on the ball of her sceptre a cuckoo sat and preened its yellow plumes. And Hera spoke to Argathona, and said:

"Daughter of the consecrated forest, do not abandon its sanctuary at the call of a mortal for a mortal's god. That which has gone may come again, and if the time of our triumph arrive we should weep, indeed, were Argathona not here to welcome us."

And so she made silence, and the restless cuckoo cried its cry while the wife of the high-minded drew her veil about her face. And the next to speak was Poseidon, the sovereign of the sea, and Poseidon leaned upon his trident, and his voice was as the lapping of waves in a sunny bay.

"These plead for the fruitful earth. I plead for the fruitless sea. Fair as a maiden in its grace, fierce as a mænad in its rage. Unchanging, ever-changing, pitiful and pitiless, kind and cruel, ceaselessly beautiful. Surely you will not surrender companionship with the sight and the sound and the savor of the sea."

So Poseidon spoke, arrogant, and was silent, and it seemed to the sleeper that from afar, from the side of the sea, there rose unearthly music as from the breath of the sea-people blown through the curling conch. And the next to speak was the divine one with the crested head, she that carries a lance and bears the face of Medusa on her shield, Pallas Athena, protector of Athens. A wise owl rode on her shoulder and made as if it whispered in her ear. And Pallas Athena spoke to Argathona, and said:

"It is better to be wise in the wisdom of the woodlands than wise in the wisdom of mortals, for mortal man is born to trouble, and mortal woman is born to travail, and the life of each is like the puff of breath that an infant spends in a cry. The child of the wildwood lives idly, divinely, knowing neither cark nor care, and day succeeds day, delicious, and shall succeed till the new order changes and the gods return again."

And so she was silent, and the owl on her shoulder ruffled its neck-feathers and winked its eyes benignly at the sleeping child. And the next to speak was Hermes, the subtle contriver, the crafty, with the living wings upon his heels and the twisting snakes upon his staff, and he spoke to Argathona, and his voice entreated wheedlingly, and it had the persuasion of music rippling from the stringed shell of the tortoise. And Hermes spoke to her, and said:

"My kinswoman, put no faith in the words of man, for the lips that praised us yesterday praise another lord to-day, and who knows what such fluctuant minds may praise to-morrow. Mortal man is guileful and his speech is a snare, but thou, being warned, be wily and deny him and let him die."

So he spoke and was silent, and the wings on his heels ceased to quiver and the snakes stiffened about his rod. Then the girl-goddess Artemis glided over the grass, short-kirtled, the comely huntress, with her bow and arrows upon her, and some stray locks of her pale hair floating on her neck. And Artemis spoke to Argathona as she slept, and said:

"Sweet sister, living the life I loved to live in the dear woodways with the citizens of the wood, take heed to my speech and be cheered. Shun the love of mortal, for your lover will die as Endymion died, and you will remember him for a while and weep, as I remembered and wept for Endymion. But time can sweeten the grief that wrings for a season the deathless heart, wherefore be wise with time betimes, and abide our coming though it be long delayed; for while you wait you have endless pleasure in the changing days and the shifting seasons and the swelling years, in the sunshine and the moonshine and the shining of the stars."

So she spoke and was silent, and the night wind fluttered the fair curls upon her nape and the silver gray folds about her knees. Then the effulgent, the sun-god, moved from his fellows, Phœbus Apollo, with his lyre cradled in his left arm, and his right hand touched the strings, and what he spoke he seemed to sing, and his song was as the song of the wandering stars in heaven. And he spoke to Argathona, and said:

"Daughter of the gods, the gods forbid your unfaith. To be of us once is to be of us forever, and, though we linger in the hollow land, we are still the celestials, and still we desire the remembrance and the fidelity of our kin. It is nobler to hold to our memory than to surrender us for a mortal and a mortal's melancholy god. Wait in the greenwood, watch with the ancient faith, patient in the knowledge of endless youth."

So he was silent, and the sunlight of his words seemed to race all over her body and thread her veins with fire. And thereafter it seemed to Argathona, in her slumber, that god spoke after god innumerable, beautiful gods and grotesque gods in their attributes of benignant or terrible divinity, each appealing to her, or commanding her to stay with the ancient faith, and to shut her heart against the sons of men and the Son of Man. Their voices were eloquent as the rustling of leaves in the forest or the crisping of waves on the shore, so that she could have been content to rest there and to listen to them in gladness through the revolving years.

When it seemed to her that all had spoken, came from that fair company the fairest of them all, Aphrodite, the incomparable, lovelier than all women, loveliest of all goddesses, with her gray doves fluttering about her naked body, and as she moved across the grass red roses burgeoned at her feet. Aphrodite came very nigh to the sleeping dryad, and her eyes were shining with the passion and compassion of love, and her voice was wooing and winning with a music unheard out of dreams. Aphrodite spoke, and said:

"Argathona, I pity you, and I know not what to say, for I, like you, have known what it is to love a mortal, and in very truth I think it were better to love a mortal than never to know the meaning of love. Love, then, this mortal and let him die divinely, having kissed immortal lips and clasped immortal beauty. And when he is but as the dust of yesterday, there will still be comely mortals to love, and you can quench your passing hours of sorrow with golden years of joy. But do not forsake the old faith for the new god, for he that is by my side is still the greatest god in the world, and ever the master of mortal men."

As she spoke, Aphrodite moved a little ways and gave place, and Argathona saw the form and face of a beautiful, silent youth, and his countenance was grave and glorious, and Argathona beheld undazzled the splendor of the godhead of Eros. Eros spoke no word, but he lifted up his hands as if at once in blessing and command, and at that look and sign Argathona's heart seemed to melt within her and to need no other entreaties. But even then there loomed a mighty figure from the forest, making his way through the shining ranks of the divine, a shaggy, puck-nosed giant, with little horns sprouting from his forehead through his tangle of savage curls, and though he was made like a man-god he ran on goat shanks, and he held in his hand a strange pipe, framed of many pieces of reed of different measure bound together by withies. In his presence the other gods appeared to fade and show faint, and the power of the new-comer seemed to inform all the forest and to overshadow all the world.

Pan spoke no word as he fixed his fierce, friendly eyes upon Argathona, but he set his thick lips to the rims of his reeds and blew down them, and his breath made such melody in their channels as Argathona ached with fear and longing to hear, and all the other gods stood spellbound. The piper piped of the red earth and the green grass and the blue sky and the yellow corn, of the straight passions and the simple pleasures of men, of love and pursuit and triumph, of hunger with meat a-nigh, of thirst with the wine-skin between the fingers, of sleep and waking, of jollity and horror, the mirth and the fear of things. He piped of the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, the humming of bees and the buzzing of flies, the flowing of streams and the growing of flowers, the singing of shepherds and the dancing of the nymphs upon the green. He piped till his piping came to a burden, and the burden of his piping seemed to be, "Keep the Faith."

Then all the Olympians cried out in chorus: "Wait, watch, keep the faith." And behind the circle of the greater gods all that populous multitude of the lesser gods took up the call and voiced it, ringing through the forest and filling the sky, and stretching to the ends of the world: "Watch, wait, keep the faith."

And with that cry there arose again the sound of the beating of wings and the trampling of horses and the straining of sails and the wailing of great winds, and then in a breath the Olympians vanished, the vision faded, and Argathona awoke in the strong morning sunshine to find her lover looking down upon her.

XXVIII

LOVER AND LASS

When Simon carried Rainouart senseless out of the slough where his comrades perished, he made as hard as his horse could fare on the way to the Eleusinian wood. While the flying forces of the dead duke kept on the main way to Athens, he sought to strike a trail that would lead him more directly to his goal, and, ignorant though he was of the country in which he found himself, the native sense of a war-worn campaigner, acting like a kind of instinct, guided him aright. But the business was slow, first from the unfamiliarity of the region and next from the fact that the good horse could go at no continuance of a steady pace with two heavy men upon his back. Indeed, when they came to the mountainous places, there was much picking of the way and no little stumbling and sliding in the act. So that it happened that the May daylight was fairly spent before Simon felt confident that he was well within the precincts of the Eleusinian wood, and that the purpose of his journey was so far accomplished.

He had been too much occupied for thought of other matter than escape from danger up to this moment, but now, when so many leagues lay behind him and the bloody swamp, now, when what pursuit must have been was afoot in quite another direction on the heels of the Athenian army, Simon decided that the time had come to rest awhile and to consider the case of the young prince, who still lay inanimate before him. Reining his steed, he dismounted. Then, still holding the bridle of the horse, he lifted Rainouart from the saddle and carried him with little difficulty to a shady place a little way removed from the narrow track they had for some time been following. Here Simon laid the unconscious youth on his back beneath a tree, and tethered the horse to another at a little distance.

Now Simon felt very keenly the wisdom of that provision of wine and victual which he had made before riding from Athens, and which he had the presence of mind to preserve in the midst of all the agony of the murderous slough. Unstopping his flagon, he parted Rainouart's lips with the gentle firmness of a strong, sure hand, and tilted some of the red liquor down his companion's throat. After a little while Rainouart began to show signs of returning consciousness. The color rekindled in his cheeks, his lips began to move to a more easy breathing, and presently he opened his eyes with a sigh, and looked around him with the dazed regard of those that wake from sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. Soon his wandering regard fixed itself on the face of Simon, who was looking steadily at him, and, recognizing a known countenance, Rainouart struggled to a sitting posture and clapped his hands to his humming head.

"What are you staring at me for?" he asked first, fretfully. Then, as he glanced about him and saw the carpet of grass that he lay on and the thicket of trees that encompassed him, he continued in amazement, "Where, in Heaven's name, are we?"

To this question Simon answered, solemnly, "In safety, thanks be to Heaven."

Rainouart, with his wits still wool-gathering, wondered. "Safety from what?" Then, suddenly, memory swooped back into her temple, and the young man sprang to his feet swiftly and advanced upon Simon.

"Where are the rest of us? Where is the duke? Where are my comrades?"

To the which hot questions Simon could do no more than render cold answer.

"I hope their souls are in paradise by now, for, indeed, their bodies are no longer quick, and we are the leave of that fellowship."

Then at first the prince began to storm and ejaculate, being shaken out of his native gravity by his strange case and his imperfect understanding of the matter, but Simon presently told him a plain tale that quenched his heat with tears. Simon showed him how the cause of Athens was lost, how Duke Baldwin and his pride of knights had perished, how Simon had saved his prince and himself from the peril, and how his prince's immediate duty was to the girl he loved, the girl who loved him.

Rainouart was silent a little space as the memory of the morning's business came back to him, and he mused on Simon's words and found them honest. Then he held out his hand to Simon, who clasped it.

"Friend," he said, "I had little cause to love Athens or those that dwelt therein, always excepting Guy de Hainault and Jaufre de Brabant, good knights. As for my sire, I will not speak of him, for he made my mother's life bitter, and it may be that I sinned in thinking thereof bitterly. But God knows I would have died with my fellowship. Yet since it has pleased God to save me, by your strength and your fidelity, from the swamp of slaughter, I am clean of any treason and free to seek for my sweetheart."

"Now this is well," crowed Simon, yet he gulped a groan, too, as he spoke, thinking how he had rescued a youth for whom he cared nothing to pleasure a maid for whom he cared much.