Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade Part 28

There was silence, and the great n.o.bles looked on, not understanding, while Dunstan held his torch so that the light fell full upon Sir Arnold's pale features.

"Then take my glove!"

He plucked off his loose leathern gauntlet and tossed it lightly at Gilbert's face. But Dunstan's quick left hand caught it in the air, while the torch scarcely wavered in his right.

Gilbert was paler than his enemy, but he would not let his hand go to his sword, and he folded his arms under his mantle, lest they should move against his will.

"Sir," he said, "I will not fight you again at this time, though you killed my father treacherously. Though you have stolen my birthright, I will not fight you now, for I have taken the Cross, and I will keep the vow of the Cross, come what may."

"Coward!" cried Sir Arnold, contemptuously, and he would have turned on his heel.

But Gilbert stepped forward and caught him by his arms and held him quietly, without hurting him, but so that he could not easily move and must hear.

"You have called me a coward, Sir Arnold de Curboil. How should I fear you, since I can wring you to death in my hands if I will? But I will let you go, and these good lords here shall judge whether I am a coward or not because I will not fight you until I have fulfilled my vows."

"Well said," cried the old Count of Bourbon.

"Well said, well done," cried many others.

Moreover, the Count of Savoy, of whose race none was ever born that knew fear, even to this day, spoke to his younger brother of Montferrat.

"I have not seen a braver man than this English knight, nor a better man of his hands, nor one more gentle, and he has the face of a leader."

Then Gilbert loosed his hold and Sir Arnold looked angrily to the right and left, and pa.s.sed out of the crowd, all men making way for him as if they would not touch him. Some of them turned to Gilbert again, and asked him questions about the strange knight.

"My lords," he answered, "he is Sir Arnold de Curboil, my stepfather; for when he had killed my father, he married my mother and stole my lands. I fought him when I was but a boy, and he left me for dead in the forest; and now I think that he is come from England to seek occasion against me; but if I live I shall get back my inheritance. And now, if I seem to you to have dealt justly by him, I crave my leave of you, and thank your lords.h.i.+ps for your good will and courtesy."

So they bade him good-night, and he went away, leaving many who felt that he had done well, but that, in his place, they could not have done as much. They did not know how dear it cost him, but dimly they guessed that he was braver than they, though they were of the bravest.

He was very tired, and had not slept in a good bed under his own tent for two months; yet he was sleepless, and awoke after two hours, and could not sleep again till within an hour of the winter dawn; for he feared some evil for Beatrix if her father should claim her of the Queen and take her back from Ephesus by sea, as he must have come.

At daylight, warming themselves at a fire, Dunstan told Alric all that happened in the night. The Saxon's stolid face did not change, but he was thoughtful and silent for some time, remembering how the Lady G.o.da had once had him beaten, long ago, because he had not held Sir Arnold's horse in the right way when the knight was mounting.

Presently Beatrix's Norman tirewoman came to the two men, wrapped in a brown cloak with a hood that covered half her face. She told them that her lady knew of Sir Arnold's coming, and begged of Sir Gilbert that for her sake he would walk by the river at noon, when every one would be at dinner in the camp, and she would try and meet him there.

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 pa.s.s 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.