The next day came and went, a pageant of white clouds in a deep blue sky, and the earth all green to the purple of the distant hills.
Martin Valliant began the morning with a queer flush of excitement, even of trepidation. The woman with the dark hair and the wild woodland eyes would mount her horse and ride away out of his life. And somehow he did not want her to go, nor was he ashamed of the desire. He found himself in awe of her, but he did not fear her as he had feared poor Kate Succory. She was a mystery, a vision, a strange new world that made him stand wide-eyed with wonder. Her lips made him think of the holy wine, pure drink, red as blood, and undefiled.
His restlessness began with the dawn. He rang the chapel bell, went through the services, with his thoughts wandering out and waiting expectantly outside the rest-house door. For the very first time the spirit of dissimulation entered Brother Martin’s life, prompting him to walk up and down the grassy space outside his cell, hands folded, head bent, as though in meditation.
He saw her door open. She came out, her black hair hanging loose, wished him a calm “good morning,” and went down toward the spring. She had gone to wash herself there, to dabble her hands in the water. Martin paced up and down.
She returned, disappeared into the rest-house, and there was silence—suspense. Martin Valliant kept passing the open doorway, but he had not the courage to look in.
“Father Martin——”
He faced around with a guileless air, as though she had been very distant from his thoughts.
“Did you speak to me, Mistress——”
“And I have not told you my name! I am called Catharine Lovel. I wish to tarry here for some days, if St. Florence does not forbid it.”
Martin looked grave.
“I never heard that St. Florence had set a boundary to his charity,” he said.
“Then I am the more his debtor in the spirit. This is so sweet and calm a place. I come from a forest country, Father Martin.”
“It is a very wonderful country,” he agreed.
“And should be pleasant to one who has been vowed to a month’s silence?”
Again Martin agreed with her. She stood at gaze, her hands clasped in front of her.
“One cannot lose oneself with this moor as a guide post. I shall ride out, Father Martin, and go down into the woods.”
“In the valley there the beech trees are very noble,” he said; “I love them.”
“Sometimes, Father Martin, trees are nobler than men.”
He pondered those words of hers all day.
Dusk was falling before she returned. The brown horse’s ears hung limp, as though she had ridden him many miles, and his coat was stained with sweat. Martin Valliant had been standing in the doorway of his cell. He went forward to hold her horse.
“I so managed it that I lost myself,” she said.
Her face looked white in the dusk, and her eyes tired.
“I reached a river, a fine stream.”
“The Rondel. It runs a league away, and the woods are great and very thick.”
“That lured me on—perhaps. I found a ford, and pushed my horse over, there are wild grasslands beyond all full of flowers.”
“I have never been so far,” he confessed.
“It is a great country, even wilder than my own. I saw as splendid a hart as ever swam a stream come down and cross the river. And now I am as hungry as though I had followed the hounds.”
He saw that she was weary.
“I will look to the horse.”
She glided down from the saddle.
“The poor beast has had to suffer for my whims, father. He will bless you, no doubt. And so good-night to you; I shall be asleep almost before I have supped.”
Martin Valliant led the horse to the stable, took off the saddle and bridle, and rubbed the beast down with a handful of hay. He found the animal muddied above the knees, and there were other matters to set Martin thinking. The fords of the Roding were floored with sand, for the Roding was a clean river and ran at a good pace. Of course, the mud might have come from some piece of bog or a forest stream. He was the more astonished that she should have reached the river, and having reached it, found her way back again through one of the wildest and most savage parts of the Forest. The ways were few and treacherous, and known only to the forest folk, and yet what reason was there for her to lie?
The second day resembled the first in its happenings, save that Martin Valliant betrayed a more flagrant interest in this mysterious woman’s pilgrimage. She rode out early, and he hid himself behind a thorn bush on the moor and watched her progress. She chose neither the path that led to the beech woods, nor the road going west, but turned aside along the track that made for Oakshot Bottom. Martin watched her till she was out of sight, hidden by the belt of birches that bounded the northern rim of the moor.
She returned earlier that day, and in a strange and sullen temper. She let Martin take the horse, but her eyes avoided his, and she had little to say to him.
“I struck a fool’s country—all sand.”
“That would be the White Plain.”
“ ‘White’ they call it! A good jest!”
“Because of the birch trees.”
“Ah, the birch trees! I remember.”
He looked at her curiously, but she went straight to the rest-house and shut herself in. Something seemed to have gone very amiss with her that day, and Martin was honestly perplexed. Were women made of such wayward stuff that some dust, a wood of birch trees, and perhaps a few flies, could stir such spirited discontent?
He took her horse to the stable, fed and groomed him as though he were my lady’s servant. And again he examined the beast’s feet, only to discover something that was singular. One of the hind hoofs had red clay balled in it, and Martin Valliant knew that red clay was not to be found in that part of the Forest.
He picked the stuff out and stared at it, holding it in one palm.
“Oakshot is yellow, Bracknell is black,
Troy is as white as a miller’s sack,
The Paradise fields are as brown as wood,
But red is the color of Bloody Rood.”
He called to mind the old Forest jingle, and the reddish-yellow lump in his hand rhymed with it.
“Bloody Rood? That is the Blount’s lordship. Young Nigel holds the fee.”
He frowned and tossed the clay into the stall.
Martin saw no more of Mellis that evening; she remained shut up in the rest-house, nor did he leave the limits of his cell. A new emotion had been born in Martin Valliant’s heart—an emotion that was so utterly human that the saint was fast losing himself in the man. Mellis was growing more mysterious, more elusive, and Martin Valliant’s imagination had carried him away at a gallop in pursuit of her.
Why had she ridden all the way to Bloody Rood? Chance could not have carried her there, and what reason had she for hiding the truth? The adventure had not gone smoothly, to judge by the temper of her return. And what sort of adventure could befall a woman in the Forest?
From the moment of that thought an utterly new look came into Martin Valliant’s eyes. His nostrils dilated, he stared fixedly at some imaginary scene, his hands clenched themselves. Dame Nature had flicked him with her scourge of jealousy, set him thinking about a certain young Nigel Blount of Bloody Rood.
Martin Valliant discovered his own manhood that night. He had ceased to be an onlooker, a creature in petticoats, an impersonal, passionless saint. He was going to take a part in the adventure: to see for himself how life stood.