White mist filled the valley, for there was no wind moving, and the night had been very still. The moon had sunk into the Forest, but though the sun had not yet climbed over the edge of the day a faint yellow radiance showed in the east. As for the birds, they had begun their piping, and the whole valley was filled with a mysterious exultation.
Into this world of white mist and of song walked Brother Martin, old Roger Valliant’s son—old Valliant, the soldier of fortune who had fought for pay under all manner of kings and captains, and had come back to take his peace in England with an iron box full of silver and gold. Old Valliant was dead, with the flavor of sundry rude romances still clinging to his memory, for even when his hair was gray he had caught the eyes of the women. Then in his later years a sudden devoutness had fallen upon him; there had been a toddling boy in his house and no mother to care for the child. Old Valliant had made great efforts to escape the devil; that was what his neighbors had said of him. At all events, he had left the child and his money to the monks of Paradise, and had made a most comely and tranquil end.
Brother Martin was three-and-twenty, and the tallest man in Orchard Valley. The women whispered that it was a pity that such a man should be a monk and take his state so seriously. There was a tinge of red in his hair; his blue eyes looked at life with a bold mildness; men said that he was built more finely than his father, and old Valliant had been a mighty man-at-arms. Yet Brother Martin often had the look of a dreamer, though his flesh was so rich and admirable in its youth. He loved the forest, he loved the soft meadows and the orchards, the path beside the river where the willows trailed their branches in the water, his stall in the choir, the mill where the wheel thundered. The children could not let him be when he walked through the village. As for the white pigeons in the priory dovecot, they would perch on his hands and shoulders. And yet there was a mild severity about the man, a clear-sighted and unfoolish chastity that brooked no meanness. He was awake even though he could dream. He had had his wrestling matches with the devil.
Brother Martin went down to the river that May morning, stripped himself, piled his clothes on the trunk of a fallen pollard willow, and took his swim. He let himself drift within ten yards of the weir, and then struck back against the swiftly gliding water. There had been heavy rains on the Forest ridge, and the Rondel was running fast—so fast that Martin had to fight hard to make headway against the stream. The youth in him had challenged the river; it was a favorite trick of his to let himself be carried close to the weir and then to fight back against the suck of the water.
And a woman was watching him. She had been standing all the while under a willow, leaning her body against the trunk of the tree, her gray cloak and hood part of the grayness of the dawn. Nothing could be seen of her face save the white curve of her chin. She kept absolutely still, so still that Martin did not notice her.
The Rondel river gave Martin a fair fight that morning. All his litheness and his strength were needed in the tussle; he conquered the river by inches, and drew away very slowly from the thundering weir. The woman hidden behind the willow leaned forward and watched him.
The sun had risen, a great yellow circle, when Martin reached the spot where he had left his clothes. The mist was rising, and long yellow slants of light struck the water and lined the scalloped ripples with gold. The water was very black under the near bank, and as Martin climbed out, holding to the trailing branches of a willow, he saw the dew-wet meadows shining like a sheet of silver. The birds were still exulting. The sunlight struck his dripping body and made it gleam like the body of a god.
Martin had frocked himself and was knotting his girdle when he heard the woman speak.
“Oh, Mother Mary, but I thought death had you!” She threw herself on her knees and seized one of his hands in both of hers. “The saints be thanked, holy father; but we in Paradise would be wrath with you for thinking so little of us.”
Martin stared at her, and in his astonishment he suffered her to keep a hold upon his hand. Her hood had fallen back, and showed her ripe, audacious face, and her black-brown eyes that were full of a seeming innocence. Her hair was the color of polished bronze, and her teeth very white behind her soft, red lips.
“What are you doing here, child?”
He was austere, yet gentle, and strangely unembarrassed. The girl was a ward of Widow Greensleeve’s, of Cherry Acre.
She made a show of confusion.
“I was out to gather herbs, holy father—herbs that must have the dew on them—and I saw you struggling in the river—and was afraid.”
He smiled at her, and withdrew his hand.
“I thank you for your fear, child.”
“Sir, you are so well loved in the valley.”
She stood up, smoothing her gown, and looking shyly at the grass.
“You are not angry with me, Father Martin?”
“How should I be angry?”
“In truth, but my fear for you ran away with me.”
She gave him a quick and eloquent flash of the eyes, and turned to go.
“I must gather my herbs, holy father.”
“Peace be with you,” he said simply.
Martin went on his way, as though nothing singular had happened. The girl loitered under the willows, looking back at him with mischievous curiosity. He was very innocent, but somehow she liked him none the less for that.
“Maybe it is very pleasant to be so saintly,” she said; “yet he is a fine figure of a man. I wonder how long it will be before Father Satan comes stalking across the meadows.”
Kate Succory made a pretense of searching for herbs, so ordering her steps that she found herself on the path that led to the house at Cherry Acre. The path ran between high hawthorn hedges that sheltered the orchards, and since the hedges were in green leaf, the way was like a narrow winding alley between high walls. She did not hurry herself, and presently she heard some one following her along the path.
“Good-morrow, Kate.”
She halted and turned a mock-demure face.
“Good-morrow, holy father.”
Geraint was grinning under his cowl.
“You are up betimes, sweeting.”
She walked on with a shrug of the shoulders.
“I have been gathering herbs, and I have the cow to milk.”
“Excellent maid. And nothing wonderful has happened to you?”
“Oh, I have fallen in love with some one,” she said tartly; “it is a girl’s business to fall in love.”
Geraint sniggered.
“I commend such humanity.”
“It is not with you, holy father. Do not flatter yourself as to that.”
She tossed her head, and walked daintily, swinging her shoulders. And Geraint looked at her brown neck, and opened and shut his hairy hands.
“Perhaps Dame Greensleeve will give me a cup of hot milk?” he said.
“Oh, to be sure.”
And she began to whistle like a boy.
Brother Martin was a mile away, brushing his feet through the dew of the upland meadows. He had crossed the footbridge at the mill, and spoken a few words with Gregory, the miller, who had thrust a shock of sandy hair out of an upper window. Rising like a black mound on the edge of the Forest purlieus stood a grove of yews, and it was toward these yews that Martin’s footsteps tended.
The yews were very ancient, with huge red-black trunks and dense green spires crowded together against the blue. No grass grew under them, for the great trees starved all other growth and cheated it of sunlight. A path cut its way through the solemn gloom, but the yew boughs met overhead.
And yet there was life in the midst of this black wood, life that was grotesque and piteous. The path broadened to a spacious glade, and in the glade stood a little rude stone house thatched with heather. The dwellers here labored with their hands, for a great part of the glade was cultivated, and about the house itself were borders of herbs, roses, and flowering plants. A couple of goats were browsing outside the wattle fence that closed in the garden, and a blue pigeon strutted and cooed to its mate on the roof ridge of the house.
Martin stopped at the swinging hurdle that served as a gate. A man was hoeing between the rows of broad beans, an old man to judge by the stoop of his shoulders and the slow and careful way he used the hoe. He wore a coarse white smock with a hood to it; a kind of linen mask covered his face.
“You are working early, Master Christopher.”
The man turned and straightened himself with curious deliberation. There was something ghastly about that white mask of his with its two black slits for eye-holes. He looked more like a piece of mummery than a man, a grotesque figure in some rustic play.
He lifted up a cracked voice and shouted:
“Giles, Peter—Brother Martin is at the gate.”
Two be-cowled and masked creatures came out of the house. All three were so alike and so much of a size that a stranger would not have told one from the other. They formed themselves into a kind of procession, and shuffling to the gate, knelt down on a patch of grass inside it.
Martin’s voice was very gentle.
“Shall I chant the Mass, brothers?”
The three lepers looked at him like lost souls gazing at Christ.
“The Lord be merciful to us and cast His blessing upon you,” said one of them.
So Martin chanted the Mass.
The three bowed their heads before him, as though it gave them joy to listen to the sound of his voice, for Martin chanted like a priest and a soldier and a woman all in one. He had no fear of these poor creatures, did not shrink from them and hold aloof. When he brought them the Sacrament he did not pass God’s body through a hole in the wall. The birds had ceased their singing, and the world was very still, and Martin’s voice went up to heaven with a strong and valiant tenderness.
When he had ended the Mass the three lepers got up off their knees and began to talk like children.
“Can you smell my gillyflowers, Brother Martin?”
“The speckled hen has hatched out twelve chicks.”
“You should see what Peter has been making; three maple cups all polished like glass.”
“If the Lord keeps the frosts away there will be a power of fruit on the trees.”
Martin opened the gate and walked into the garden, and the three followed him as though he had come straight out of heaven. No other living soul ever came nearer than the place where the path entered the yew wood. Alms were left there, and such goods as the lepers could buy. But Brother Martin had no fear of the horror that had fallen on them, and had such a fear shown itself he would have crushed it out of his heart. And so he had to see and smell Christopher’s gillyflowers, handle the speckled hen’s chicks, and admire the maple cups that Peter had made. Nature was beautiful and clean even though she had cast a foul blight upon these three poor creatures. They hung upon Martin’s words, watched him with a kind of timid devotion. God walked with them in that lonely place when Brother Martin came from Paradise and through the wood of yews.
Meanwhile, Brother Geraint had followed Kate Succory to Widow Greensleeve’s house in Cherry Acre, where the maze of high hedges and orchard trees hid his black frock completely. The girl had gone a-milking, and Brother Geraint had certain things to say to the widow. He sat on a settle in the kitchen, and she moved to and fro before him, a big breeze of a woman, plump, voluble, very rosy, with roguish eyes and an incipient double chin. She laughed a great deal, nodded her head at him, and snapped her fingers, for she and Brother Geraint understood each other.
“Kate will dance to that tune. Bless me, she’ll need no persuading.”
Geraint spoke very solemnly.
“If she can cure the young man of his self-righteousness she shall be well remembered by us all. See to it, dame.”
The widow curtsied, making a capacious lap.
“Your servant, holy father.”
And then she fell a-laughing in a sly, shrewd way.
“God be merciful to us, my friend; yet I do believe that it is more pleasant to live with sinners than with saints. The over-pious man rides the poor ass to death. Now you—my friend——”
She laughed so that her bosom shook.
“We would all confess to Brother Geraint. I know the kind of penance that you would set me, good sir.”
Geraint got up and kissed her, and her brown eyes challenged his.
“Leave it to me,” she said; “I will physic the young man for you.”