The Forest Lovers

by Maurice Hewlett

  CHAPTER XXI

  HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL

  The charcoal-burner's convoy, bearing at once the evidence and thereward of his humanity, a battered lady on one ass and her flayedfriend on another, jogged leisurely through the forest glades. The timewas the very top of spring, the morning soft and fair, but none of theparty took any heed: the charcoal-burner because he was by habit tooclose to these things, Isoult because she was in a faint, the black rambecause he had been skinned. When Isoult did finally lift her head andbegin to look timidly about her, she found herself in a countryunfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week'sjourney from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew thatevery mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she waspowerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. Andwhat span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from himthan discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes, had hounded her?

  In this new blank discomfiture of hers, she was like one who has beentaught patiently to climb by a gentle hand. The hand trusts her andlets go--down, down she falls, and from the mire at the bottom can seethe sunny slopes above her, and the waiting guide stretched at restuntil she come. The utter abasement of her state numbed her spirit; anyother spirit would have been killed outright. But to her one thingremained, that dull and endless patience of the earth-born, poor clodswithout hope or memory, who from dwelling so hidden in the lap of theearth seem to win a share of its eternal sufferance. Your peasant willbow his back as soon as he can stand upright, and every year draws himnearer to the earth. The rheumatics at last grip him unawares, andclinch him in a gesture which is a figure of his lot. The scarredhills, the burnt plains, the trees which the wind cows and lays down,the flowers and corn, meek or glad at the bidding of the hour--theearth-born is kin to these, more plant than man. I have done ill if Ihave not thus expounded Isoult la Desirous, for without such knowledgeof her you will hardly understand her apathy. She had been lapped solong on the knees of earth; her flights in the upper air had been soshort, and her tumble with a broken wing so sharp, that she resumed thecrouch, the bent knees, the folded arms, the face in hands of theearth-born, with hardly a struggle. If she had been meant for the air,she would be in the air; if she was meant to die a serf as she hadlived, why, at the rate she was spending, death would be quick--_ecco_!The word comes pat when you talk of such lives as hers, for the Italianpeasant is the last of the earth-born, invincibly patient.

  So Isoult, it seems, had the grace to know how far she had fallen, butnot the wit to try for redemption once more. In accepting her tumblefor a fate, I think it is clear that she was so far earthy as to bemeek as a woodflower. Says she, If the rain fall, the dew rise, the sunshine, or wind blow mild, each in their due season--well, I will lookup, laugh and be glad. You shall see how lovely I can be, and howloving. If the frost bind the ground in May, if you parch me withfrozen wind, or shrivel me with heat, or let me rot in the soak of awet June--well, I will bend my neck; you will see me a dead weed; Ishall love you, but you shall hardly know it. If you are God, youshould know; but if you are a man--ah, that is my misfortune, to loveyou in spite of common-sense.

  Isoult believed she was abandoned by Prosper; she believed that shedeserved it. She must be graceless, would die disgraced, having servedher turn, she supposed. If, nevertheless, she persisted in loving, whowas hurt? Besides, she could not help it any more than she could helpbeing a scorn and a shame. Fatalist! So it was with her.

  The charcoal burner had no curiosity. She hadn't been quite murdered;she was a boy; boys do not readily die. On the other side, they arehandy to climb woodstacks, labour saving appliances--with the aid of anash plant. And he was a clear fat sheep to the good. So he asked noquestions, and made no remarks beyond an occasional oath. They sleptone night in the thicket, rose early, travelled steadily the next day,and in course reached a clearing, where there were three or four blacktents, some hobbled beasts, a couple of lean dogs, and a steady columnof smoke, which fanned out into a cloud overhead. Here were the coalstacks; here also she found the colliers, half-a-dozen begrimedruffians with a fortnight's beard apiece. No greetings passed, nor anyintroduction of the white-faced boy shot into their midst. One of them,it is true, a red-haired, bandy-legged fellow, called Falve, lookedover the newcomer, and swore that it was hard luck their rations shouldbe shortened to fatten such a weed; but that was all for the hour.

  At dusk, suppertime, there was a cross examination, held by Falve.

  "What's your name, boy?"

  "Roy."

  "To hell with your echoes. Where do you come from?"

  "I don't know."

  "What can you do?"

  "As I am bid."

  "Can you climb?"

  "Yes."

  "Cook?"

  "Yes."

  "Wink at a woman?"

  "I see none."

  "Fight?"

  "At need."

  "Take a licking?"

  "I have learnt that."

  "By God he has, I'll warrant," chuckled the man who had found her.

  "Hum," said Falve. "Are you hungry, Roy?"

  "No."

  "Then do you cook the supper and I'll eat it. Do you see this littlebelt o' mine?"

  "Yes."

  "It's a terror, this belt. Don't seek to be nearer acquaint. Go andcook."

  The ram proved excellent eating--tender and full of blood. Humane, evenliberal, counsels prevailed over the sated assembly. The boy seemeddocile enough, and likely; just a Jack of the build needful to climbthe stacks of smouldering boughs, see to the fires, cord the cut woodand the burnt wood, lead the asses, cook the dinner, call the men--tobe, in fact, what Jack should be. Jack he was, and Jack he should becalled. Falve held out for a thrashing as a set-off; it seemedunnatural, he said, to have a belt and a boy at arms'-length. It wasoutvoted on account of the lateness of the hour, but only delayed. Thebeds were made ready, and Jack and his masters went to sleep.

  The argument, which, holding as I do steadfastly with Socrates, I mustfollow whithersoever it runs, assures me that charcoal-burning is agrimy trade, and the charcoal-burners' Jack the blackest of the party;for if he be not black with coal-smoke, he will be black and blue withhis drubbings. Isoult, in the shreds of Roy, grew, you may judge, asblack and uncombed as any of the crew. She had not a three-weeks'beard, but her hair began to grow faster; the roses in her cheek werein flower under the soot. Her hair curled and waved about her neck, hereyes shone and were limpid, her roses bloomed unawares; she grew sinewyand healthy in the kind forest airs. She worked very hard, ate verylittle, was as often beaten as not. All this made for health; inaddition, she nursed a gentle thought in her heart, which probablyaccounted for as much as the open air. This was the news of Prosper'sreturn to High March, and of the fine works he performed there in thehall. It came to her in a roundabout way through some pony drovers, whohad it from Market Basing. The pietist at March, who made the image ofSaint Isolda, may have spread the news. At any rate it came, it seededin her heart, and as she felt the creeping of the little flower sheblushed. It told her that Prosper had avenged her--more, had owned herfor his. This last grain of news it was which held her seed. If heowned her abroad--amazing thought!--it must be that he loved her. Asshe so concluded, a delicate, throbbing fire fluttered in her side, andstole up to burn unreproved and undetected in her cheeks. Her reasoningwas no reasoning, of course; but she knew nothing of knightly honour orthe dramatic sense, so it seemed incontrovertible. At this discoveryshe was as full of shame as if she had done a sin. A sin indeed itseemed almost to be in her, that one so high should stoop to one solow, and she not die at once. Sacrilege--should not one die rather thansuffer a sacrilege to be thrust upon one? So Clytie may have felt, andOreithyia, when they discerned the God in the sun, or wild embraces ofthe wind.

  Yet the certainty--for that it was--coincided with her lurkingsuspicion of the virtue lying in her own strong love. It made thatsuspicion hardy; it budded, as I hav
e said, and bore a flower. Shecould feel and fondle her ring again, and talk to it at night. "Liesnug," she would say, "lie close. He will come again and put thee inplace, for such love as mine, which endureth all things, is not to begainsaid." Thus she grew healthy as she grew full of heart, and gainedsleek looks for any who had had eyes to see them.

  Luckily for her, at present there was none. It is providence for theearth-born that their mother's lap soon takes furrows in which they mayrun. The charcoal-burners' life was no exception: hard work from dawnto dusk, food your only recreation, sleep your only solace. The weatheris no new thing to you, to gape at and talk about. As well might thegentry talk about the joys of their daily bath. You have no quarrels,do no sins, for you have neither women nor strong waters in your foresttents. And if you knew how, you would thank God that you are incapableof thought, since a thinking vegetable were a lost vegetable. To thinkis to hope, and to hope is to sin against religion, which says, God sawthat it was good. More than any reflecting man your earth-born believesin God, or the devil. It comes to much the same, if you will but workit out. He is a deist, his God an autocrat.

  Isoult, the demure little freethinker, had another secret god--him ofthe iris wings. She loved, she was loved; she dared hope to be happy.So far of the earth as to be humble, so far from it as to hope, shegrew in the image of her god and was lovely; she remembered theprecepts of her mother earth and was patient. Whenever she could shewashed herself in the forest brooks; so woods and running water saw inher the blossoming rod. At these times she could have hymned her godhad she known how; but Prosper had only taught her what his priests hadtaught him, that this was a world where every one is for himself, andto him that asks shall be given. To him that asks twice should be twicegiven. The consequence is that life is a great hunting, with no timefor thanksgiving unalloyed. You must end your _Gloria_ in a whiningpetition. Having, however, nothing to ask, she sat at these times inecstasy inarticulate, her rags laid by for a season, looking long andfar through the green lattice towards the blue, bent upon explorationof the joyful mysteries. A beam of the sun would fall upon her to warmher pale beauty and make it glow, the wind of mid-June play softly inher hair, and fold her in a child's embrace. Then again she would toywith her ring. "Ring, ring, he will come again, and put thee where thoushouldest be. Meantime lie still until he lie there instead of thee."

  July heats stilled the forest leaves; the coal-stacks grew apace. Thecharcoal-burners' Jack had hair to his waist and had to hide it in hiscap; the charcoal-burners' beards were six weeks old. There was talk ofnights of a market in Hauterive, where Falve's mother kept a huckster'sshop.