The man also was changed since Gilbert had seen him. The face was handsome still, but it was thin and sharp, and the eyes were haggard and weary, as if they had seen a great evil long and had sickened of it at last, and were haunted by it. Gilbert looked at him who had murdered his father and had brought shame to his mother, and who had robbed him of his fair birthright, and he saw that something of the score had been paid. Gradually, too, as Sir Arnold gazed, a look of something like despair settled in his face, a sort of horror that was not fear, — for he was no coward, — but was rather a dread of himself. He made a step forward, and Gilbert waited, and heard how Dunstan, who stood behind him, loosened his dagger in its brass sheath.
At that moment came the King’s herald again as before, bidding him go up to the presence of the King and Queen.
“Room for the Guide of Aquitaine!”
The cry rang loud and clear, and Gilbert saw Sir Arnold start in surprise at the high-sounding title. Then he followed the herald; but in his heart there was already a triumph that the man who had left him for dead in the English woods should find him again thus preferred before other men.
The Queen’s face grew paler as he came toward her and knelt down on one knee, and through her embroidered glove of state his own hand, that was cold, felt that hers was colder. But it did not tremble, and her voice was steady and clear, so that all could hear it.
“Sir Gilbert Warde,” she said, “you have done well. Guienne thanks you, and France also—” She paused and looked toward the King, who was watching her closely.
Louis bent his great pale face solemnly toward the Englishman.
“We thank you, Sir Gilbert,” he said, with cold condescension.
“A hundred thousand men thank you,” added Eleanor, in a ringing voice that was to make up for her husband’s ungrateful indifference.
There was a moment’s silence, and then the voice of Gaston de Castignac, high and full, sent up a cheer that was heard far out in the clear night.
“God bless the Guide of Aquitaine!”
The cheer was taken up in the deep shout of strong men in earnest; for it was known how Gilbert cared not for himself, nor for rewards, but only for honour; and the thirty men who had been with him had told far and wide how often he had watched that they might sleep, and how he would always give the best to others, and how gently and courteously he treated those he commanded.
But in the loud cheering, Eleanor took his hand in both hers and bent down to speak to him, unheard by the rest; and her voice was low and trembled a little.
“God bless you!” she said fervently. “God bless you and keep you, for as I am a living woman, you are dearer to me than the whole world.”
Gilbert understood how she loved him, as he had not understood before. And yet her touch had no evil power to move him now, and the shadow of his mother no longer haunted him in her eyes as he looked up. There, beside the Christmas altar, in the Holy Night, she was trying to complete the sacrifice of herself and her love. Gilbert answered her earnestly.
“Madam,” he said, “I shall try to do your will with all my heart, even to death.”
Thereafter he kept his word. But now he rose to his feet, and after bending his knee again, he looked into the Queen’s sad eyes, and passed on to make way for the others, while the cheers that were for him still rang in the air.
Then he began to walk to his tent. Dunstan had lighted a fresh torch and was waiting for him. But the great barons, who had gone up to the King and Queen before him, pressed round him and shook his hand, one after another, and bade him to their feasting on the morrow; nor was there jealousy of him, as there had been when he had saved the Queen’s life at Nicaea, for now that they saw him they felt that he was no courtier, and desired only the safety of the army, with his own honour.
As they thronged about him, there came Sir Arnold de Curboil, pressing his way among them, and when he was before Gilbert he also held out his hand.
“Gilbert Warde,” he asked, “do you not know me?”
“I know you, sir,” answered the young knight, in a clear voice that all could hear, “but I will not take your hand.”
There was silence, and the great nobles 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 passed 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 lordships 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 Goda 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 a
long 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.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 945