Martin Valliant unsaddled and unbridled the horses while Mellis took the pitcher and went down to the spring.
She did not hurry herself, but walked slowly through the bracken and under the full shade of the trees, her eyes looking into the distance as though she were deep in thought. Once or twice she smiled, and pressed her hand over her heart. Her face had a soft white radiance, a mysterious glow beneath the skin.
The spring was the beginning of one of the forest streams, a brown pool that overflowed and trickled in a green and oozy dampness down the hillside. The clear water lay like a mirror, reflecting the branches and the fragments of blue sky overhead. Mellis knelt down and gazed at herself in the pool. She was very fair, with dark and desirous eyes, and she loved herself for Martin’s sake. Her hair came falling from under her hood, and one strand touched the water, stirring a faint and transient ripple.
Mellis filled her pitcher and went back to the glade. The west was a glory of gold, the light smiting the trees and spreading a yellow glow upon the grass. The distant forest vistas were all purple, shading into a violet horizon. Somewhere a blackbird was singing to his mate.
She saw Martin Valliant sitting at the foot of a great oak, and staring at the sunset. The slanting light touched his face and made it shine with a strange yet somber fire. So absorbed was he that he did not see Mellis coming through the bracken. The two horses were cropping the grass; saddles, harness, and saddle-bags lay piled under Martin’s oak tree.
Mellis caught a deep breath, and laid a hand upon her bosom.
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
Her voice was very soft and challenging. Martin turned, looked at her strangely, and stood up.
“Dreams!”
Her eyes were full of light.
“Yet men must live by bread.”
She set the pitcher on the grass, opened the saddle-bags, and spread their supper on the grass. Martin stood and watched her, mute, frowning, like a man breathless from a sudden pain at the heart.
“Mellis!”
“Dear lad?”
“I have been thinking.”
She went on calmly with her work, cutting the bread with a knife she had brought from Marvel’s cottage, and spreading honey upon the slices.
“What troubles you, Martin?”
He did not answer for a moment. She knelt, looking up at him; the obstinate anguish in his eyes betrayed to her all that was in his heart.
“Come, you are tired; you shall eat and sleep.”
She spread a cloak and made a rest of one of the saddles, talking the while as though no love-crisis threatened them.
“I know what it is to be weary, to feel that death might take you, and you would not care. Then one falls down under a haystack and sleeps, and in the morning the sun is shining, and the world seems young again. Wine and water, cooked meat, bread and honey and a spiced cake! Let us be thankful.”
He lay down some two paces from her, propping himself on one elbow and not using the saddle that she had fetched to serve as a rest. His eyes avoided hers. Mellis had spread the slices of meat on a great green dock leaf, and she held out the dish with both hands.
“Eat, and then you shall talk to me.”
It was a silent meal, but Mellis had her way. She did not trouble him with words, or by watching him with questioning eyes. He was like a restive horse, or a thing in pain, to be soothed and calmed and rescued from its own restlessness. Her mood seemed as calm and as tranquil as the brown dusk that was beginning to fill the woods while the western sky still blazed.
When they had ended their meal she knelt up and drew the linen out of her saddle-bag.
“The light is going. Come here to me, Martin.”
He looked at her almost with fear.
“What would you?”
“That wounded shoulder must be cared for. You will carry the mark of it, always, for my sake.”
He did not move, and she went to him on her knees, reaching for the pitcher and the wine. He raised a hand as though to repulse her, but she put it gently aside.
Yet all the while that she was busy with his shoulder he sat with bowed head, silent, brooding, not even wincing when she cleaned the raw wound, and poured in wine. His eyes stared at the grass; the only pain he felt was the mystical anguish that her soft hands caused him.
“There!”
She knelt facing him of a sudden, her eyes looking steadily into his face.
“Now, you may speak to me, Martin Valliant. There can be no silence between us. Tell me all that is in your heart.”
His head seemed to sink lower.
“Are you afraid of me, Martin—you who would fear no man? What am I but a woman?”
“It is the woman I fear.”
“Oh! man—man!”
He answered her sullenly.
“I was on the way to sin against you. What am I but an outcast? What can I give you?”
“What do I ask of life?”
“It is I who must ask for you, think for you, face God for you.”
She caught his hands.
“Martin, look into my eyes.”
He obeyed her.
“Tell me, what do you see in them?”
His face shone with a strange light.
“I see—something—something that is too good and great for me, a sacred thing that I must not touch.”
She drew her breath deeply.
“Oh, my man, what has come to you? Will you not think of me as the woman, the woman to be saved from other men?”
“Mellis!”
His voice was hoarse, and she felt the muscles in his arms quivering.
“Yes, you cannot shirk that truth. But what is in your mind? You spoke of Swartz and Gawdy Town.”
He steadied himself.
“That is ended. Is there no right of sanctuary in the land?”
“Sanctuary?”
She had begun to tremble a little.
“The nuns of Lilburn Minster are good women; you could take sanctuary there—till the times mended. No man could harm you.”
“Martin, you are offering me death!”
“Death?”
“Oh, man—man! Have we not suffered enough together? Are you turning to stone? Is it for my sake? I would rather die than do this thing! My heart will have none of it!”
He bowed his head over her hands.
“May I be strong—for your sake!”
“Strong—to wound me—to the death.”
She let go of his hands, drew aside, and knelt staring at the grass.
Presently she spoke, and her voice accused him.
“Are you but a child, Martin, soul blinded, the fool of visions? Life cannot go back. Things happen; it is like the dawn of the day, the birth of a flower. You cannot stay the sun from rising, or bid the sap not flow in the tree. And you have made me love you. I have spoken. Would you put the truth in me to shame?”
He rose up, leaving her kneeling there, and his face was a mist of pain.
“Mellis!”
“It is the truth. It is in your hands.”
He stood staring at the fading west.
“God, speak to me! Let me listen for a voice. Give me strength—strength.”