VII
LOVE IS ENOUGH
The maid gazed at the man wistfully, a-quiver with mysterious hopes and fears.
"What god do you serve?" she faltered, her memory all alive with the divine faces and the shining forms and that calm, tragic procession to the shadowland.
Rainouart bowed his head, meekly devotional as his devout mother, and crossed himself slowly while he prayed a prayer.
"Messire Christ Jesus, who died for all men and for me, a sinner, thirteen hundred years ago. What other Lord may a knight serve? Do you take me for a follower of Mohammed?"
To Argathona neither name had any meaning. The beautiful gods her babehood knew had journeyed to the sunless land, and her mother had told her how a great voice, louder than all the winds that fill the sky, had cried abroad that great Pan was dead. She had always heard of a power mightier than the gods. That power had triumphed; she knew no more, she asked no more.
"I take you for a brave man," she said, looking him full in the face, and she looked many things that she could not say. In the conquering spell of that night of springtime his glorious youth seemed as abiding as hers, and she forgot to pity his dower of frailty or her dower of endurance, surrendering to a greater force than pity. To the man it seemed as if he, standing there holding this unknown woman's hands and drowning in this unknown woman's eyes, had learned in one noble moment the sacred secret of life, the reason why it is worth while to exist and to endure, live hardily a man's hard life, die firmly a man's inevitable death. All his spirit was at his lips as he spoke, his hands clinging to the clasp of her hands. For he knew that he had come to the crown of his life, that he had caught the clew that he was seeking, that he had found the noble rose.
"Pray God you take me for your loyal lover. My soul has lived alone for this moment, my little life has been spared for this grace." So he began, and then for the first time in all her age-long life the dryad heard the splendid, the terrible words that govern the reeling world.
"I love you," the man cried from the heart of his heart, and again, "I love you," and yet again, "I love you"—the mystical three words repeated mystically three times, as is meet in the litany of love. He would have caught her in his arms, but she held his hands fast, and for all his strength he could not pluck them away from her grasp. Joy and sorrow struggled for the supremacy of her being.
"Do you really love me, you mortal man, me whom you have never seen before this night?" she asked, with a tender pity, with a tender irony. The pity was for him, the about-to-die loving the undying; the irony was for her, that she spoke with the speech of doubt knowing with all her heart that he loved her, knowing with all her heart that she loved him.
"I am a mortal man," Rainouart answered, passionately, "as you are a mortal woman; but love is immortal, and true knights who are true lovers only think so of love. They ride and they ride and they see fair faces in lattice or orchard, and they vow the world is a pleasant place; but they pay no heed to the fair faces, and they ride on in the quest of the rose. Then at a thoughtless turn of the road they see one face and the world is heaven or hell—heaven if they win and wear the rose, hell if they may not attain to its petals. No, not so," he corrected himself, quickly, "for to love the loveliest is well whether she smile or frown, and so, come what may, it is my glory to love you, but I wish you could love me a little."
She answered in racking anguish to the rapture of the man:
"I think I could love you very dearly, but I do not think it would be wise."
"Do not mistrust me," he pleaded. "I could be nothing but loyal to my lover, loyal to the death."
As the words rang from his lips Argathona gave a great cry, and loosing her hold of him covered her face with her hands like a frightened child, and her body shook with sobs.
"Alas, to the death!" she wailed, shuddering at the gulf between them and the doom laid upon immortals to see their mortal lovers die.
Rainouart trembled; liberated from her fingers, his life seemed to ebb again furiously, the very strength her touch had given him made him the weaker at the withdrawal of that contact. His wound ran red anew, and the hurt in his head burned horridly. But he cried vehemently, catching at his breath:
"We must all die, young or old, gentle or simple; but we die in the hope of salvation, and to-day we two live, to-day I love you, to-day I pray God that you may love me."
She was stirred by his passionate enthusiasm, by the vehemence of his speech, by the earnest meaning in his eyes. Loving him, she was eager to be loved according to the simple creed of the woodland, and she tried like him to forget the unavoidable.
"Give me your love," he cried to her again. "Give me your love. Come with me into the wide world. I am Rainouart of the Rock, son of the Duke of Athens. You shall live like a queen in the sweet city."
A sudden pain tugged at the dryad's heart, and she shook her head sadly. This was not what she understood by love, to go and dwell among mortals and watch them die as summer flies die in a day.
"If I gave you my love," she said, "I could not go with you into the wide world. My life is here in the ancient wood."
Resolve ruled Rainouart's forehead with strong lines. He was so sure that this was the love of his life, and that to love like this was truly to live, that he was ready to pay his price for paradise.
"Then I will dwell with you in the ancient wood," he answered. "The world is a fine place, full of color and music and honorable strife, but true love is better than all things, and if you love me I will dwell with you in the ancient wood."
The dryad sighed. She longed with all her heart to say yes, longed and dared not. She knew now how her mother felt when the Greek youth wooed her in the days before the heroes sailed to Troy.
"It may not be," she said, but she said it half-heartedly, petitioning secretly if, after all, it might not be. Perhaps she might keep his spirit alive within him with her immortal lips, perhaps she might hold death off with her immortal arms as the demi-god Herakles did when he brought back Alkestis.
The impetuous Rainouart, lip-deep in love, made light of her denial. Heaven had been very gracious to him and he would not lose the rose. What was there to weep for in his father's court? Could its drunken chief and dissolute women and debauched princes restrain him from the religious quiet of the wood? What was there in all Athens to be set against a moment of Argathona's love?
"It must be," he persisted; "we are troth-plighted, you and I. We have exchanged loves and hearts and cannot deny it."
He drew a ring from his finger as he spoke, a heavy gold ring cunningly carved with the image of our Lord upon the tree, and set about with little studs of gold wherewith to say the rosary.
"This is my Master and thine," he whispered. "Wear it and be mine."
She put the ring and his hand away from her, troubled by his words and by the unknown image on the ring. Rainouart misunderstood her gesture.
"Dear," he protested, "I mean all honor and honesty with you. With this ring I will wed you. Hear, my dear lady. A little way beyond the wood between here and Athens there lives apart a holy man; let us go to him hand-in-hand that he may make us man and wife."
The dryad tried painfully and vainly to understand his meaning. What had their loves to do with the little hermitage at the foot of the hill and the lonely man who lived there? To wed meant to her to give herself hand and heart and all to the lover whom she loved, and if ever she dreamed on summer days and nights of what love could be it was as of something that might come to pass when the gods returned, as they surely would one day return from the twilight land. Now she knew that she loved this mortal wholly, now she knew that this mortal loved her wholly, and now, looking at her mortal lover, she knew that he was in peril of the melancholy disease, the ceasing, which mortals call death. For since she had unclasped her hands from his hands his face had grown pale again which had warmed at her touch, and his energies had ebbed with the warmth of his wooing, and his senses sickened with the dizziness in his head. She clasped him again, but her touch could no longer quicken his vitality as keenly as before, for her powers were weaker through love of a mortal. He slipped from her arms upon the grass and his face was grown suddenly gray.
"What has happened," he moaned, "that a scratch can so unman me?"
Argathona bent over him, consoling, comforting, loving.
"I must find the herb of healing," she said. "It hides in the heart of the wood. Sleep here for a little till I return."
She breathed softly upon his forehead willing him to sleep, and the youth's drawn face softened, his limbs relaxed, and he lay motionless upon the turf. A stranger would have guessed that he was dead, but Argathona knew better; she knew that the youth lay drowned in a dreamless, soothing slumber.
"Sleep," she murmured—"sleep till I return with the herb of healing."
Tears flooded her eyes making the moonlight dim, and she beat at her breasts.
"Alas! I cannot deny to love him. My mother's fate is mine, for I love a mortal, and my lover will die in a day and I shall live unhappy till the gods ride back from the twilight land."
She turned from her sleeping lover and ran swifter than a stag across the moonlit space and dived into the darkness of the wood.