Love Among the Ruins Part 5

At the western end of the glade, a gigantic fir, a forest patriarch, stood out above the more slender figures of his fellows. The grotesque roots, writhing like talons, tressled a bench of boughs and skins.

Before the tree burnt a fire, the draught sweeping upwards to fan the fringe of the green fir's gown. The man in the black harness took Yeoland to the seat under the tree. The boughs arched them like a canopy, and the wood fire gave a l.u.s.ty heat in the gloaming.

A boy had run forward to unhelm the knight in the red cloak. Casque and sword lay on the bench of boughs and skins. The girl's glance framed for the first time the man's face. She surveyed him at her leisure under drooping lids, with a species of reticent interest that escaped boldness. It was one of those incidents to her that stand up above the plain of life, and build individual history.

She saw a bronzed man with a tangle of tawny-red hair, a great beak of a nose, and a hooked chin. His eyes were like amber, darting light into the depth of life, alert, deep, and masterful. There was a rugged and indomitable vigour in the face. The mouth was of iron, yet not unkind; the jaw ponderous; the throat bovine. The mask of youth had palpably forsaken him; Life, that great chiseller of faces, had set her tool upon his features, moulding them into a strenuous and powerful dignity that suited his soul.

He appeared to fathom the spirit of the girl's scrutiny, nor did he take umbrage at the open and critical revision of her glances. He inferred calmly enough, that she considered him by no means blemishless in feature or in atmosphere. Probably he had long pa.s.sed that age when the sanguine bachelor never doubts of plucking absolute favour from the eyes of a woman. The girl was not wholly enamoured of him. He was rational enough to read that in her glances.

"Madame is in doubt," he said to her, with a glimmer of a smile.

"As to what, messire?"

"My character."

"You prefer the truth?"

"Am I not a philosopher?"

"Hear the truth then, messire, I would not have you for a master."

The man laughed, a quiet, soundless laugh through half-closed lips.

There was something magnetic about his grizzled and ironical strength, cased in its sh.e.l.l of blackened steel. He had the air of one who had learnt to toy with his fellows, as with so many strutting puppets. The world was largely a stage to him, grotesque at some seasons, strenuous at others.

"Ha, a miracle indeed," he said, "a woman who can tell the truth."

She ignored the gibe and ran on.

"Your name, messire?"

The man spread his hands.

"Pardon the omission. I am known as Fulviac of the Forest. My heritage I judge to be the sword, and the shadows of these same wilds."

Yeoland considered him awhile in silence. The firelight flickered on his harness, glittering on the ribbed and jointed shoulder plates, striking a golden streak from the edge of each huge pauldron. Mimic flames burnt red upon his black cuira.s.s, as in a darkened mirror. The night framed his figure in an aureole of gloom, as he sat with his ma.s.sive head motionless upon its rock-like throat.

"Five years ago," she said suddenly, "you rode as a n.o.ble in the King's train. Now you declare yourself a thief. These things do not harmonise unless you confess to a dual self."

"Madame," he answered her, "I confess to nothing. If you would be wise, eschew the past, and consider the present at your service. I am named Fulviac, and I am an outlaw. Let that grant you satisfaction."

Yeoland glanced over the glade, walled in with the gloom of the woods, the stream foaming in the dusk, the armed men gathered about the further fire.

"And these?" she asked.

"Are mine."

"Outcasts also?"

"Say no hard things of them; they are folk whom the world has treated scurvily; therefore they are at feud with the world. The times are out of joint, tyrannous and heavy to bear. The n.o.bles like millstones grind the poor into pulp, tread out the life from them, that the wine of pleasure may flow into gilded chalices. The world is trampled under foot. Pride and greed go hand in hand against us."

She looked at him under her long lashes, with the zest of cavil slumbering in her eyes. Autocracy was a hereditary right with her, even though feudalism had slain her sire.

"I would have the mob held in check," she said to him.

"And how? By cutting off a man's ears when he spits a stag. By splitting his nose for some small sin. By branding beggars who thieve because their children starve. Oh, equable and honest justice! G.o.d prevent me from being poor."

She looked at him with her great solemn eyes.

"And you?" she asked.

He spread his arms with a half-flippant dignity.

"I, madame, I take the whole world into my bosom."

"And play the Christ weeping over Jerusalem?"

"Madame, your wit is excellent."

A spit had been turning over the large fire, a haunch of venison being basted thereon by a big man in the ca.s.sock of a friar. Certain of Fulviac's fellows came forward bearing wine in silver-rimmed horns, white bread and meat upon platters of wood. They stood and served the pair with a silent and soldierly briskness that bespoke discipline. The girl's hunger was as healthy as her sleek, plump neck, despite the day's hazard and her homeless peril.

Dusk had fallen fast; the last pennon of day shone an eerie streak of saffron in the west. The forest stood wrapped in the stupendous stillness of the night. An impenetrable curtain of ebony closed the glade with its rush-edged pool.

Fulviac's servers had retreated to the fire, where a ring of rough faces shone in the wayward light. The sound of their harsh voices came up to the pair in concord with the perpetual murmur of the stream. Yeoland had shaken the bread-crumbs from her green gown. She was comforted in the flesh, and ready for further foining with the man who posed as her captor.

"Sincerity is a rare virtue," she said, with a slight lifting of the angles of her mouth.

"I can endorse that dogma."

"Do you pretend to the same?"

"Possibly."

"You love the poor, conceive their wrongs to be your own?"

Fulviac smiled in his eyes like a man pleased with his own thoughts.

"Have I not said as much?"

"Well?"

"I revere my own image."

"And fame?"

He commended her and unbosomed in one breath.

"Pity," he said, "is often a species of splendid pride. We toil, we fight, we labour. Why? Because below all life and effort, there burns an immortal egotism, an eternal vanity. 'Liberty, liberty,' we cry, 'liberty and justice man for man.' Yet how the soul glows at the sound of its own voice! The human self hugs fame, and mutters, 'Lo, what a G.o.d am I in the eyes of the world!'"