Via Crucis

Chapter XXI

Gilbert waited long, for he went down early to the river, and he sat on a big stone sunning himself, for the air was keen, and there was a north wind. At last he saw two veiled women coming along the bank. The shorter one was a little lame and leaned upon the other's arm, and the wind blew their cloaks before them as they came. When he saw that Beatrix limped, knowing that she had not quite recovered from her fall, and remembering that she might have been killed, his heart sank with a sickening faintness.

He took her by the hand very gently, for she looked so slight and ill that he almost feared to touch her, and yet he did not wish to let her fingers go, nor she to take them away. The tirewoman went down to the river-bank, at some distance, and they sat upon the big stone, hand in hand like two children, and looked at each other. Suddenly the girl's face lightened, as if she had just found out that she was glad; her eyes laughed, and her voice was as happy as a bird's at sunrise.

Gilbert had not seen her for a long time. To such a man, all women, and even one chosen woman, might easily become an ideal, too far from the material to have a real hold upon his manhood, and so high above earth as to have no spiritual realization. Even in that age many a knight made a divinity of his lady and a religion of his devotion to her, so that the very meaning of love was forgotten in the ascetic impulse to seek the soul's salvation in all things, even in the contempt of all earthly longings; and those men demanded as much in return, expecting it even after their own death. There were also women, like Anne of Auch, who gave such devotion freely. Nevertheless, it was not altogether in this way between Beatrix and Gilbert, and if it might have been, so far as he was concerned, she would not have had it so, and her words proved it.

"I am so proud of you!" she cried. "And I am so very glad to see you."

"Proud of me?" he asked, smiling sadly. "I am not proud of myself. For all I have done, you might be dead at Nicaea."

"But I am alive," she answered happily, "and by your doing, though I cannot yet walk quite well."

"I ought to have let the Queen pass on. I ought to have thought only of you."

He found a satisfaction in saying aloud at last what had been so long in his heart against himself, and in saying it to Beatrix herself. But she would not hear it.

"That would have been very unknightly and disloyal," she said. "I would not have had you do it, for you would have been blamed by men. And then I should never have heard what I heard yesterday and last night, the very best words I ever heard in all my life-the cry of a great army blessing one man for a good work well done."

"I have done nothing," answered Gilbert, stolidly determined to depreciate himself in her eyes.

But she smiled and laid her gloved hand quickly upon his lips.

"I would not have another laugh at you, as I do!" she cried.

He looked at her, and the mask of grave melancholy which was fast becoming his natural expression began to soften, as if it could not last forever.

"I have often thought of you and wondered whether you would think well of my deeds," he said.

"You see!" she laughed. "And now because I am proud of you, you pretend that you have done nothing! That is poor praise of my good sight and judgment."

He laughed, too. Since the dawn of time, women have retorted thus upon brave men too modest of their doings; and since the first woman found the trick, it has never failed to please man. But love needs not novelty, for he himself is always young; the stars of night are not less fair in our eyes because men knew the 'sweet influence of the Pleiades' in Job's day, nor is the scent of new-mown hay less delicate because all men love it. The old is the best, even in love, which is young.

"Say what you will," answered Gilbert, presently, "we are together to— day."

"And nothing else matters," said Beatrix. "Not even that it is two months since I have seen you, and that I have been ill, or, at least, half crippled, by that fall. It is all forgotten."

He looked at her, not quite understanding, for as she spoke her eyebrows were raised a little, with her own expression, half sad, half laughing at herself.

"I wish I could see you more often," answered Gilbert.

Her little birdlike laugh disconcerted him.

"Indeed, I am in earnest," he said.

"And yet when you are in earnest, you do much harder things," answered Beatrix, and at once the sadness had the better of the laughter in her face. "Oh, Gilbert, I wish we were back in England in the old days."

"So do I!"

"Oh, no! You do not. You say so to please me, but you cannot make it sound true. You are a great man now. You are Sir Gilbert Warde, the Guide of Aquitaine. It is you, and you only, who are leading the army, and you will have all the honour of it. Would you go back to the old times when we were boy and girl? Would you, if you could?"

"I would if I could."

He spoke so gravely that she understood where his thoughts were, and that they were not all for her. For a few moments she looked down in silence, pulling at the fingers of her glove, and once she sighed; then, without looking up, she spoke, in her sweet, low voice.

"Gilbert, what are we to each other? Brother and sister?"

He started, again not understanding, and fancying that she was setting up the Church's canon between them, which he now knew to be no unremovable impediment.

"You are no more my sister than your tirewoman there can be," he answered, more warmly than he had spoken yet.

"I did not mean that," she said sadly.

"I do not understand, then."

"If you do not, how can I tell you what I mean?" She glanced at him and then looked away quickly, for she was blushing, and was ashamed of her boldness.

"Do you mean that I love you as I might a sister?" asked Gilbert, with the grave tactlessness of a thoroughly honest man.

The blush deepened in her cheek, and she nodded slowly, still looking away.

"Beatrix!"

"Well?" She would not turn to him.

"What have I done that you should say such a thing?"

"That is it!" she answered regretfully. "You have done great things, but they were not for me."

"Have I not told you how I have thought of you day after day, hoping that you might think well of my deeds?"

"Yes. But you might have done one thing more. That would have made all the difference."

"What?" He bent anxiously towards her for the answer.

"You might have tried to see me."

"But I was never in the camp. I was always a day's march in the lead of the army."

"But not always fighting. There were days, or nights, when you could have ridden back. I would have met you anywhere-I would have ridden hours to see you. But you never tried. And at last it is I who send for you and beg you to come and talk with me here. And you do not even seem glad to be with me."

"I did not think that I had a right to leave my post and come back, even for you."

"You could not have helped it-if you had cared." She spoke very low.

Gilbert looked at her long, and the lines deepened in his face, for he was hurt.

"Do you really believe that I do not love you?" he asked, but his voice was cold because he tried to control it, and succeeded too well.

"You have never told me so," Beatrix answered. "You have done little to make me think so, since we were children together. You have never tried to see me when it would have cost you anything. You are not glad to see me now."

Her voice could be cold, too; but there was a tremor in some of the syllables. He was utterly surprised and taken unawares, and he slowly repeated the substance of what she said.

"I never told you so? Never made you think so? Oh, Beatrix!"

He remembered the sleepless nights he had passed, accusing himself of letting even one thought of the Queen come between him and the girl who was denying his love-the restless, melancholy hours of self— accusation, the cruel self-torment-how could she know?

She was in earnest, now, though she had begun half playfully; for if the man's heart had not changed, he had gone away from her in his active life, and in the habit of hiding all real feeling which comes from living long alone or with strangers. It was true that outwardly he had hardly seemed glad to see her, and all the ring of happiness had died away out of her voice before they had exchanged many words. He felt her mood, and it grew clear to him that he had made some great mistake which it would be very hard to set right. And she was thinking how boldly she had striven with the Queen for his love, and that now it seemed to be no love at all.

But he, whose impulse was ever to act when there was danger, however much he might weary his soul with inward examination at other times, grew desperate, and gave up thinking of a way out of the difficulty. What he loved was slipping from him, and though he loved it in his own way, it was indeed all he loved, and he would not let it go.

Thoughtless at last, and sudden, he took her into his arms, and his face was close to hers, and his eyes were in hers, and their lips breathed the same breath. She was not frightened, but her lids drooped, and she turned quite white. Then he kissed her, not once, but many times, and as if he would never let her go, on her pale mouth, on her dark eyelids, on her waving hair.

"If I kill you, you shall know that I love you," he said, and he kissed her again, so that it hurt her, but it was good to be hurt.

After that she lay in his arms, very still, and she looked up slowly, and their eyes met; and it was as if the veil had fallen from between them. When he kissed her again, his kisses were gentle and altogether tender.

"I had almost lost you," he said, breathing the words to her ear.

The Norman tirewoman sat motionless by the river's edge, waiting till she should be called. After a time they began to talk again, and their voices were in tune, like their hearts. Then Gilbert spoke of what had happened in the night, but Beatrix already knew that her father had come.

"He has come to take me away," she said, "and we have talked together. Gilbert-a dreadful thing has happened; did he tell you?"

"He told me nothing-excepting that I was a coward!" He laughed scornfully.

"I think he is half mad with sorrow." She paused and laid her hand on Gilbert's. "His wife is dead, — your mother is dead, — with the child she bore him."

Gilbert's eyes alone changed, but under her palm Beatrix felt the sinews of his hand leap and the veins swell.

"Tell me quickly," he said.

"She was burned," continued Beatrix, in a tone of awe. "She made my father grind his people till they turned, and she made him hang the leader who spoke for them. Then all the yeomen and the bondmen rose, and they burned the castle, and your mother died with the child. But my father escaped alive. Now I am again his only child, and he wants me again."

Gilbert's head fell forward, as if he had received a blow, but he said nothing for a time, for he saw his mother's face; and he saw her not as when they had parted, but as he remembered her before that, when he had loved her above all things, not knowing what she was. In spite of all that had gone between, she came back to him as she had been, and the pain and the pity were real and great. But then he felt Beatrix's hand pressing his in sympathy, and it brought him again to the evil truth. He raised his head.

"She is better dead," he said bitterly. "Let us not speak of her any more. She was my mother."

He stared long at the river, and the sadness of his homeless and lonely state in the world began to come upon him, as it came often. Then a soft voice broke the spell, and the words answered his thoughts.

"We are not alone, you and I," it said, and the two small hands crept up shyly and clasped his neck, and the loving, pathetic face looked up to his. "Do not let him take me away!" she begged.

His hand pressed her head to his breast, and once more he kissed her hair.

"He shall not take you," he said. "No one shall take you from me; no one shall come between you and me."

Beatrix's eyes seemed to drink out of his the meaning of the words he spoke.

"Promise me that," she said, knowing that he would promise her the world.

"I promise it with all my heart."

"On your knightly faith?" She smiled as she insisted.

"On my honour and faith."

"And on the faith of love, too?" She almost laughed, out of sheer happiness.

"On the very truth of true love," he answered.

"Then I am quite safe," she said, and she hid her face against his surcoat. "I am glad I came to you, I am glad that I was so bold as to send for you this day, for it is the best day of my whole life. And, Gilbert, you will not wait till I send for you another time? You will try and see me-of your own accord?"

She was altogether in anxiety again, and there was a look of fear and sadness in her eyes.

"I will try-indeed I will," he said earnestly.

"Whenever you do, you shall succeed," she answered, nestling to him. "I wish I might shut my eyes and rest here-now that I know."

"Rest, sweet, rest!"

A moment, and then, from far away, a clarion call rang on the still air. With the instinct of the soldier, Gilbert started, and listened, holding his breath, but still pressing the girl close to him.

"What is it?" she asked, half frightened.

It came again, joyous and clear.

"It is nothing," he said. "It is the Christmas banquet, and perhaps the King drinks the Queen's health-and she his."

"And perhaps, though no one knows it, she-" But Beatrix stopped and laughed. "I will not say it! Why should I care?"

She was thinking that if the Queen drank a health it might be meant, in her heart, for the Guide of Aquitaine, and she nestled closer to him in the sunshine.