Chapter XXIV
The sun sank low in the west, and the whole world was very still. Peter Swartz had fallen asleep under his apple tree in the orchard, and the white blossom scattered itself on him as he slept.
A great wonder had overtaken Martin Valliant. He had eased himself of his harness and gone down to a little grassy place where willows cast a net of shadows over the brown water. He stood there, leaning against the trunk of a willow tree, listening to the birds singing in the valley that shone like a great bowl of magic gold. The west was all afire, and throwing a strange glory over the woods, so that the tall trees seemed topped with flame. Not a breath of wind stirred in the leaves or grasses.
And Martin Valliant’s heart was full of a strange, listening awe. He looked at the still water, the burning trees, the glimmering meadows, and there seemed no sadness anywhere, but only deep exultation and a sob of wonder in the throat. His face shone under the soft green of the willows. This place was the new Paradise, and a woman’s eyes looked out of the window of Heaven.
A voice called to him.
“Martin, Martin!”
A spasm of emotion shook Martin Valliant’s soul. He spread his arms, and raised his face to the sunset. If to love a woman was sin, then God was a devil, and the Lord Christ had never walked the earth.
He heard Mellis come singing through the orchard where Peter Swartz slept under the apple trees. The sound of her voice quickened his love almost to anguish. He dared not go to her for the moment or meet those dark eyes of hers.
“Martin Valliant!”
She came out from the shadows of the orchard, and saw him standing there, his right arm covering his face. Her heart faltered for a beat or two, and then quickened with a rush of wonder and awe.
Mellis went toward him, her eyes mysterious and full of soft, tremulous light. Martin heard her footsteps and her gown sweeping the grass. He uncovered his face, and it was all white and strange and radiant.
For a moment they looked at each other with mute timidity. There seemed nothing that could be said, for the great mystery of life had touched them.
Then Mellis spoke, and her words were no louder than a light wind moving in the trees.
“I do not know what the day has done to me. But I could sit in the long grass and listen to the birds singing, and watch the sunset on the water, and never speak nor move.”
“It is very wonderful,” he said, “for all the joy of the world seems in this valley.”
“I could touch no food to-night but honey and white bread, and moisten my lips with the dew.”
She heard Martin draw in his breath.
“And presently the soft dusk will come, and the day will die. But there will be the stars, and a silver sheen on the water, and a silence that waits—and listens——”
Her face dreamed.
“Come.”
He followed her, found himself at her side, moving through the long grass that rustled under their feet. He was no more a body, but a soul that burned with yearning and a great white glory. And Mellis’s hair was as black as the night.
She led him into the garden, and there he saw their table strewn with flowers. She had set out bread, and wine, and honey. His helmet lay in the midst on a cushion of green leaves, and she had bound it about with a spray of red roses taken from the old rose bush.
Mellis pointed a finger.
“Even the roses bloomed for us to-day. And there is your crown of victory.”
He stretched out a hand and touched hers timidly, as though he were afraid.
“Mellis——”
Her hand closed on his with a sudden thrill of tenderness.
“Is not life good? Do you fear to look at me, Martin?”
“You have stepped out of heaven,” he said, “and the great light of you blinds my eyes.”
They sat down at the board, but though the bread was white and the honey sweet, little of either passed their lips. It fell to old Swartz to make an end of the loaf, and to sweeten his black beard with the honey.
“Deo gratias,” he said when Martin brought him his supper; “but I have been asleep and dreaming, and in my dreams I thought I heard a woman singing. You can leave me the wine bottle. I shall not play the swine with it.”
He looked shrewdly at Martin Valliant’s face, and saw that the green island had become a place of enchantment.
“Get you gone, Sir Greenshield. I shall be ready to sleep again, and this apple tree will serve as a tent. Black beards are not for such as you, and perhaps I was not dreaming when I slept.”
He cut himself a great hunch of bread.
“Think of the blood I have to make good! Take your youth, man, and thank God for it. You are welcome to any glory you have got out of the bloodying of my poll!”
Swartz watched Martin Valliant walk back toward the garden.
“His head is in Paradise,” he said to himself, “but he had the heart to remember my supper. May the wench be kind to him. It is all a midsummer madness—this love. Well, give me the madness, say I; good wine and a comely woman. The worms can have me when a wench will no longer give me a glint of the eye.”
Mellis had brought her lute with her from the Black Moor, and she had not touched its strings since she had sung to the burgher revelers in the tavern at Gawdy Town. And somehow all her grief and travail and yearning seemed to melt into an exultation that was like the beauty of an April day, a race of sunlight and of shadow.
As the sunset reddened, and the black bats began to flutter around on noiseless wings, the sound of her lute went over the water. Old Swartz heard it, and then her voice, deep, and strange, and very sweet, warming the heart like wine.
She looked down at Martin lying in the grass at her feet.
“Is there sin in my singing—when my brother is dead? Am I forgetting because my mouth is not silent?”
The sunset lit up Martin’s face. His eyes were gazing into the distance, eyes that questioned the earth and heaven—and life and the hypocrisies of men. It was as though the gates of a new wisdom had been opened to him. A man may think himself into hell, and feel himself into heaven.
“What is sin?”
She smiled at him.
“Such words from your lips!”
“I see a vision,” he said slowly, “of the beauty of the earth and the mystery thereof. Shall I quarrel with the apple because it comes from the bloom of the tree? Do not the beasts fight for their mates, and is there not a nobleness in valor? The good knight rides out, and his strength is for the service of those who are oppressed. As for hiding in a cell and starving one’s body—such a life begins to smell of cowardice.”
She raised her head proudly.
“We are rebels, Master Valliant, you and I. Say, have I lost you your soul?”
“No, by God; but you have found it for me, and set it free. I am no longer afraid of the shadows of sick thoughts.”
She swept her fingers over the strings, and began to sing to him as the dusk gathered. The woods melted into a cloud of blackness; the red of the sky changed to amber; moths came to feed from the white flowers in the grasses of the wild garden.
Between the snatches of song she leaned toward him, and he knelt to meet her.
“What if we die to-morrow? What can the Lord of Troy take from us?”
“No man shall take you while I live.”
“And in the Forest the birds sing at dawn.”
“And in the night I lie before your door to guard it with my body.”
They looked long into each other’s eyes.
“Martin Valliant,” she said very softly, “Martin Valliant.”
And he bowed himself and kissed her feet.