Kate Succory went no farther than the nearest cluster of gorse on the slope of the moor. She threw herself face downwards on a patch of short, sweet turf, where rabbits had been feeding, and plucked at the grass with her fingers, twisting her body to and fro with the lithe and supple movements of a restless animal. Her hair came loose, and she shook it down upon her shoulders.
There was rebellion in her eyes.
“He is a good man. Why should he not have what other men crave for? And I love him. There is not a man so tall and fine in all the Forest.”
She rested her elbows on the ground and her chin in her two hands, and stared at the gorse bushes.
“Geraint would not have hesitated. Pah! that black rat! How the girls would laugh at me! I don’t care. Why did God make him a priest?”
She frowned fiercely and bit at her lower lip, the elemental passion in her refusing to be dominated by the rules of the Church.
“He is a good man. No; I will not go away. Priestcraft is all wrong. The Lollards say so; I could argue it out with him. As if living down there in a priory made men good! Bah! what nonsense! Father Geraint is a black villain, and the rest of them are not much better. I wonder if he knows?”
A note of tenderness sounded in the turmoil of her brooding. She smiled and caressed the grass, stroking it with her open hand.
“Perhaps it would hurt him if he knew. And he was as frightened of me as though I had walked naked into the cell! Oh, my heart!”
Martin Valliant had been praying, little guessing that the days would come when he would trust to his own heart, and not be forever falling on his knees and asking strength from God. He had thrown Kate’s unbaked loaves into the fire, and made a meal from the scraps he had found in the cupboard. But he was in no mood to sit still and think. Father Jude’s spade offered itself as an honest companion, and Martin went forth into the garden to dig.
He had not turned two spadefuls of soil when Kate Succory began singing. She was sitting hidden by the gorse, her arms hugging her knees, and her voice had no note of wayward exultation. It was as though she sang to herself plaintively, like a bird bewailing its lost mate.
Martin frowned, and stood listening, but her singing did not die away into the distance as he had expected. She was hidden somewhere, and her voice remained to trouble him.
He began to dig with fierce determination, jaw set, eyes staring at the brown soil. And presently he stopped, and lifted up his head like a rabbit that has crouched hidden in a tuft of grass. What a chance for a jester to have thrown a clod at him! The girl’s singing had ceased.
Martin breathed hard, and lifted up his spade for a stroke, but the silence had fooled him.
“The moon shone full on my window
When Jock came down through the wood,
And I felt the wind in the trees blow
The springtime into my blood.”
She gave the words with a kind of passionate recklessness, and all her youth seemed to thrill in her throat. Martin bowed his head and went on digging as though by sheer physical effort he could save himself from being a man.
Presently he found himself up against the hedge, with no more ground that he could attack with the spade. The hedge was in leaf, and hid the open moor from him. He fancied he heard some one moving on the other side of the green wall.
“Martin—Martin Valliant.”
He started to walk toward the chapel, but the voice followed him along the hedge.
“Do not be angry with me, Martin Valliant; I want to speak with you. You are a good man and to be trusted; I am a grown woman and no fool.”
Martin hesitated.
“What would you say to me?”
“Many things. I have the wit to know that all is not well with the world. We are heretics, Father Martin, heretics in our hearts. We—in Paradise—no longer believe what the monks teach us, for they are bad men, who laugh in their sleeves at God.”
Martin’s eyes hardened.
“Such words should not come from your lips, child.”
She laughed recklessly.
“I speak of what I see. Is Father Geraint a holy man? Do the brothers keep their vows? And why should they—when they are but men? It is all a great mockery. And why did they send you away to this solitary place?”
He did not answer her at once, and his face was sad.
“No, it is no mockery,” he said at last, “nor is life easy for those who strive toward holiness. Get you gone, Kate. I will keep my faith with God.”
He could hear her plucking at the hedge with her fingers.
“I do not please you,” she said sullenly.
“God forgive you,” he answered her. “You are to me but a brown bird or a child. Shall I offend against God, and you, and my own soul because other men are base? No; and I will prove my faith.”
She heard him go to the cell, and a sudden awe of him awoke in her heart. She went and hid in the gorse and waited, expecting some strange and violent thing to happen. Presently she saw him come forth carrying an oak stool, a length of rope, and a knife. He went straight toward the great wooden cross on its mound, and for a moment panic seized her. Martin Valliant was going to hang himself!
She crouched, watching him, ready to rush out and strive with him for his life. She saw Martin set the oak stool at the foot of the cross, stand on it, cut the rope into two pieces, and fasten them to the two arms of the cross. He made a loop of each, and turning his back to the beam, thrust his hands through the loops. Then she understood.
Martin Valliant had only to thrust the stool away or take his feet from it, and he would hang by the arms—crucified. And that was what he did. He raised himself by drawing on the ropes, lifted his feet from the oak stool, and let himself drop so that he hung by the arms.
Kate knelt there, her arms folded across her bosom. Her brown eyes had grown big and solemn, more like the eyes of a child. She looked at Martin Valliant, and her awe of him was mingled with a strange, choking tenderness.
How long would he hang there? How long would he endure? He had only to place his feet upon the oak stool in order to rest himself to show some mercy to his body. But the soul of the man welcomed pain. His eyes looked steadily toward the sea with an obstinate tranquillity that made her marvel at his patience.
The day was far spent and the sun low in the west, and as the sun sank lower it fell behind the cross and showed like a halo about Martin Valliant’s head. The glare was in Kate’s eyes, so that the cross and the man hanging upon it were no more than a black outline.
How long would he endure? How would it end?
And then, of a sudden, the eyes of her soul were opened. She was no longer the laughing wench in love with the shape of a man. She saw something noble hanging there against the sunset, a figure that was like the figure of the Christ.
She flung herself on her face, and wept for Martin and her own heart. There was no escape from the truth. It was she who had crucified him, put him to this torment.
The sun had touched the hills and there was a wonderful golden radiance covering the earth as she rose up with wet eyes, and hastened toward the cross. She went on her knees, kissed the man’s feet, and wiped away the mark of her kisses with her hair.
“I will go,” she said, bowing her head. “If I have sinned against your holiness, Martin Valliant, forgive me—because I love you.”
He looked down at her and smiled, though his arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets.
“Who am I that I should forgive you, sister? Sometimes it is good to suffer. Go back to Paradise.”
She rose up and left him, running wildly down the long slope of the moor, not daring to let herself look back.
“He shall suffer no more for my sake,” she kept saying to herself, and all the while she was weeping and wishing herself dead.