V
THE SONG OF THE FOREST
When the noise of the clash of steel and the clatter of flying hoofs echoed through the greenwood, Argathona leaped to her feet and the warm color fled from her face. Simon, flatling on the grass, indifferent to a noise the cause whereof was shrewdly guessed by him, thought the girl more than ever akin in her pallor to those old stone statues he had lightly noticed in that garden of pleasure in Byzantium. At that time he decided easily that the living women who served his squandering humor in that garden were much more fair than those ladies of old time whom the unknown sculptor had hoped to commemorate. Now rolling the problem over carefully through somewhat sluggish processes of thought, he began to hold it little less than reasonable to change his mind.
"What is the matter?" the dryad cried, pressing her hands against her breasts and widening her eyes, catlike, as she peered through the moony gloom of the wood. Her attitude in her companion's eyes was that of a wild creature troubled, and alert to pounce.
Simon rolled lazily on the grass and gave a self-satisfied snigger.
"I met a loon by the highway at the edge of the forest poring on a foolish book, and his folly vexed me. Then I 'countered a covey of thieves in the thick of the trees and told them of my blockhead coming. From what we hear I take it that he has fallen into their fingers. Belike they are cutting his throat at this present."
He chuckled at the ugly thought. Argathona turned upon him a pale, set face and blazing eyes of rage.
"You will not suffer this!" she cried, indignant; "you are a strong man."
Simon laughed again, a fat laugh, and aired his cynical philosophy.
"Marry, will I!" he answered. "Every man oaf that kills another man oaf rids me the world of one pestilent fellow, and gives an honest man more elbow-room."
Simon had angered the dryad much before, but now he angered her more. Probably he had never heard of Medusa or he might have believed that he beheld her. Argathona's adorable face was terrible to behold in its wrath, and her tresses in the moonlight gleamed like golden serpents. The scorn in her eyes might well have scared his bulk to stone.
"Oh, you are hateful, you humans," she protested, with hands uplifted to heaven; and then she shrilled in a voice there was no resisting, "Run to his help."
Very reluctantly, for his tumble still irked him, Simon found himself obediently scrambling to his feet. The moment he stood erect Argathona clutched hold of his right hand with her left, and in another instant she had started to run in the direction from which the clangor came. Simon would have liked to resist, but he might have liked equally well to be proclaimed emperor of the East for any self-satisfactory result his wishes were likely to have. His strong right hand was a helpless prisoner in the grip of the girl's white fingers, and his limbs seemed only to obey the volition communicated to them by her swift pulses. Whether he liked it or whether he did not—and indeed he knew very well that he did not—he was scampering at the top of his speed beside the smoothly running maiden. Oh, the appalling rapidity of that race through the forest! Simon, for all his bulk, had ever been counted swift of foot among his fellows, but he had never known till that moment what it truly meant to move swiftly. His hand captured in the irresistible grasp of Argathona, the big man bounded along through the alleys and over the glades of the forest trying to keep pace shoulder to shoulder with the flying maid. It was like being tied to the tail of a comet and careering through space; or, rather, it reminded Simon's homely fancy of a dog he had once seen tied to a farmer's wagon when the farmer's horse had bolted, covering ground in reluctant hurry with trailing paws and tail. It seemed to him as if his legs no longer touched the firm earth, but floated behind him foolishly, swimming in the air, while his companion swept quicker than the wind through the interminable avenues of the wood. That frenzied flight was like the worst part of an ill dream, but it was an ill reality, and Simon's bulk suffered wofully. His heart was strained like a swollen wine-skin, the sweat rained from his aching body, there was not so much breath left in his lungs as would blow a single hair from the beard of a seeding dandelion; it was death in life to travel at that pace. After what seemed to Simon an eternity of breakneck journeying, they swept into a clearing of the forest fringed at the foot by the white highway. In that clearing, as in a theatre, Simon saw a youth with his back to a tree engaged gallantly in steel-play against a group of dusky figures that came at him by rushes and fell off again before the steady sweep of his long sword. Simon's breath and senses came back to him like a trick. He saw that the man so vehemently attacked and so shamefully outnumbered was defending himself valiantly, and he thought better of bookworms from that instant. As he watched the craft of single man against many, the assailants gave ground, and one of their number fell to the earth like a log and lay there loggish. The man attacked had a breathing span, and waited watchful with his weapon poised.
"Go to his aid," the wood-nymph whispered in Simon's ear, pointing to the man who was fighting for his life.
Simon shook his head doggedly, thinking of the rules of his misanthropic game. He had made up his mind to dislike mankind and womankind, and it seemed a declination from principle to help any one in peril of a paltry life.
"He would not thank me," he grumbled; "he is holding his own well enough."
Even as he spoke, however, the conditions of the struggle were suddenly altered. Again the robbers had made to rush the youth, again they had retreated, and this time the youth, quitting the bastion of his tree-trunk, charged his retreating foes, who fled swiftly before him hither and thither. In making this attack he left at his rear, unheeding, the man who had fallen, and this one, suddenly quickening from his seeming lethargy, rose to his feet directly behind the advancing knight, and struck at close quarters a murderous blow at his head with what seemed to be a short club or mace. The youth gave a groan and reeled as he turned and tried to face this unexpected onslaught, and instantly all his enemies came swarming at him again.
"Will you not help him?" Argathona cried, in fine scorn. "Then I will."
A fallen tree-trunk lay in their way; the dryad leaped upon it just as the harassed youth, stumbling under a second treacherous blow, tripped and fell, and the robbers came swooping from all quarters upon their quarry to despatch him. Argathona flung up her arms.
"Help me, help, ye forest powers," she cried, in a great voice that seemed to Simon to fill the four corners of the world.
At the awful sound the startled robbers turned from their victim and stared in terror at the white figure perched upon the stricken tree. Simon to that moment had noted no signs of rising storm, though it was no news to his experience that storms rise and fall swiftly in the land of Greece. But on that instant it seemed to him and to the confounded robbers that a fierce wind came roaring through the forest while a black cloud like a dragon swallowed the moon at one bite, drowning the wood with intolerable darkness, ripped at swift intervals with zigzags of lightning, blindingly bright. Furious volleys of thunder rolled through the blended terror of light and darkness, and the clamor of heaven was horribly mimicked on earth by a bellowing as of innumerable wild beasts, fierce citizens of the forest, disturbed in their slumbers by the sudden hubbub. Simon, frankly frightened, fell on his knees and tried to stammer a prayer, while the robbers, utterly discomfited, shrieked their fears, and turning from that figure standing preternaturally white against the blackness, fled for their rascal lives. It appeared to Simon as he knelt that the dryad high above him chanted a wild imprecation upon the fugitives which rang thus:
Though Simon deemed it an age-long time before the last sound of flying feet died away and the last words of the wood-nymph's imprecation faded into silence, yet the storm died with a suddenness only equalled by its birth. The thunder ceased to rumble, the lightning ceased to fly, the great, black dragon of cloud fell asunder dissipated into a myriad vanishing fragments, and in a quiet sky the sweet moon shone supreme again, filling the glade with brilliance. Simon staggered to his feet and made an end of his paternosters.
"That was a very pretty piece of work," he stammered, wiping the beads of sweat from his wet forehead as he turned to address the wood-nymph. The remark was intended to be a compliment, but it proved a soliloquy, for he found that he stood and spoke alone. Argathona had already quitted the tree-trunk and skimmed across the intervening grass to the field of battle. She was now bending over the wounded man. Simon followed her as quickly as he could, fearful of his own black shadow as it trailed raggedly in the moonlight. When he reached her side Simon, bending by her, peered into the rigid face of the fallen fighter. The man was, indeed, his book-reading knight of the afternoon, who lay now very still and pale in the moonlight with his eyes shut, and there was blood upon his bright hair and blood upon his colored coat. The dryad looked up imploringly at Simon with clasped hands and face strained with sorrow.
"The beautiful boy!" she sighed. "What have they done to him? I hope he is not dead. Tell me, you who are human and should understand your kind."
Simon stooped closer over the body and examined it dexterously enough. In the rough-and-tumble of his life he had had plenty of experience of wounds, and knew what to do. The heart was beating satisfactorily, and Simon nodded approval.
"Have you never seen death before?" he asked of his companion, while his big paws began to search more gently than seemed natural to them for the man's wounds.
Argathona wrung her hands.
"Never of human creature," she wailed; "but I still weep for the forest creatures, the beasts and the birds and the insects who seem so happy in their little lives."
By this time Simon had plucked open the knight's coat, and his fingers travelled dexterously over flesh that seemed womanly white and smooth in the moonlight.
"You are mighty compassionate," he grunted.
Argathona gave him a glance of pathetic reproval.
"I should be, being immortal," she answered, with a girlish dignity which was quaint in such a case.
Simon nodded silently. He had forgotten the girl's claim to immortality, but he was now very sure that she was a witch and her words did not worry him. Patiently he finished his examination of the body. A stroke aimed at the side had slipped on a buckle, causing only a gash where a hole had been hoped for. The loss of blood was not enough to account for the knight's helpless condition. Simon lifted him carefully to one side and then saw the cause of unconsciousness. The murderous blow that had been struck at the back of the knight's head had been struck at close quarters, and struck to kill. It had come pretty near to carry out its purpose, if the striking arm had been stronger.
Simon turned an encouraging countenance to the girl's grave face.
"Your knightling is not dead nor in great danger of death, though he has a nasty nick in the side that had better be bunged."
As he spoke he tore away a great piece of the youth's shirt and laid bare his side while he twisted the linen to shape a bandage.
"The worst of his business is that crack at the back of the head which has knocked him silly. It were well if we had some water."
"Let me do that," Argathona ordered, pointing to his employment. "I know how to stanch wounds. I saved the life of a stag lately that Alcibiades had wounded. Run you to the spring in the forest and bring me water."
When Argathona commanded in Argathona's woodland, Simon felt that it was for him to obey without question.
"Where is the spring?" he asked, as he rose to his feet.
Argathona drew from her girdle the myrtle-bough that she had thrust there when they began their wild race through the forest.
"Hold this so in your hand," she showed him, "and go straightly moonward, pressing it lightly between your palms. When it begins to quiver and twirl in your fingers you will know that you are near the spring. It is but a little way from here."
Simon had heard ere this of such ways of finding water, though in his country folk did the business rather with witch-hazel than myrtle; yet he had little doubt but that Argathona knew her woodland ways, and he took the bough from her hands and made at the top of his speed for the forest.