There was once, dear maidens, a man-of-all-trades who lived by the Ferry at Bury. And nobody knew where he came from. For the chief of his trades he was an armorer, for it was in the far-away times when men thought danger could only be faced and honor won in a case of steel; not having learned that either against danger or for honor the naked heart is the fittest wear. So this man, whose name was Harding, kept his fires going for men's needs, and women's too; for besides making and mending swords and knives and greaves for the one, he would also make brooches and buckles and chains for the other; and tools for the peasants. They sometimes called him the Red Smith. In person Harding was ruddy, though his fairness differed from the fairness of the natives, and his speech was not wholly their speech. He was a man of mighty brawn and stature, his eyes gleamed like blue ice seen under a fierce sun, the hair of his head and his beard glittered like red gold, and the finer hair on his great arms and breast overlaid with an amber sheen the red-bronze of his skin. He seemed a man made to move the mountains of the world; yet truth to tell, he was a most indifferent smith.
(Martin: Are you not quite comfortable, Mistress Jane?
Jane: I am perfectly comfortable, thank you, Master Pippin.
Martin: I fancied you were a trifle unsettled.
Jane: No, indeed. What would unsettle me?
Martin: I haven't the ghost of a notion.)
I have heard gossips tell, but it has since been forgotten or discredited, that this part of the river was then known as Wayland's Ferry; for this, it was said, was one of the several places in England where the spirit lurked of Wayland the Smith, who was the cunningest worker in metal ever told of in song or story, and he had come overseas from the North where men worshiped him as a god. No one in Bury had ever seen the shape of Wayland, but all believed in him devoutly, for this was told of him, and truly: that any one coming to the ferry with an unshod steed had only to lay a penny on the ground and cry aloud, "Wayland Smith, shoe me my horse!" and so withdraw. And on coming again he would find his horse shod with a craft unknown to human hands, and his penny gone. And nobody thought of attributing to Harding the work of Wayland, partly because no human smith would have worked for so mean a fee as was accepted by the god, and chiefly because the quality of the workmanship of the man and the god was as dissimilar as that of clay and gold.
Besides his trade in metal, Harding also plied the ferry; and then men would speak of him as the Red Boatman. But he could not be depended on, for he was often absent. His boat was of a curious shape, not like any other boat seen on the Arun. Its prow was curved like a bird's beak. And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them, if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And when they asked the fee he always said, "When I work in metal I take metal. But for that which flows I take only that which flows. So give me whatever you have heart to give, as long as it is not coin." And they gave him willingly anything they had: a flower, or an egg, or a bird's feather. A child once gave him her curl, and a man his hand.
And when he was neither in his workshop or his boat, he hunted on the hills. But this was a trade he put to no man's service. Harding hunted only for himself. And because he served his own pleasure more passionately than he served others', and was oftener seen with his bow than with hammer or oar, he was chiefly known as the Red Hunter. Often in the late of the year he would be away on the great hills of Bury and Bignor and Houghton and Rewell, with their beech-woods burning on their sides and in their hollows, and their rolling shoulders lifted out of those autumn fires to meet in freedom the freedom of the clouds.
It was on one of his huntings he came on the Wishing-Pool. This pool had for long been a legend in the neighborhood, and it was said that whoever had courage to seek it in the hour before midnight on Midsummer Eve, and thrice utter her wish aloud, would surely have that wish granted within the year. But with time it had become a lost secret, perhaps because its ancient reputation as the haunt of goblin things had long since sapped the courage of the maidens of those parts; and only great-grandmothers remembered how that once their grandmothers had tried their fortunes there. And its whereabouts had been forgotten.
But one September Harding saw a calf-stag on Great Down. There were wild deer on the hills then, but such a calf he had never seen before. So he stalked it over Madehurst and Rewell, and followed it into the thick of Rewell Wood. And when it led him to its drinking-place, he knew that he had discovered one more secret of the hills, and that this somber mere wherein strange waters bubbled in whispers could be no other than the lost Wishing-Pool. The young calf might have been its magic guard. To Harding it was a discovery more precious than the mere. For all that it was of the first year, with its prickets only showing where its antlers would branch in time, it was of a breed so fine and a build so noble that its matchless noon could already be foretold from its matchless dawn; and added to all its strength and grace and beauty was this last marvel, that though it was of the tribe of the Red Deer, its skin was as white and speckless as falling snow. Watching it, the Red Smith said to himself, "Not yet my quarry. You are of king's stock, and if after the sixth year you show twelve points, you shall be for me. But first, my hart-royal, you shall get your growth." And he came away and told no man of the calf or of the pool.
And in the second year he watched for it by the mere, and saw it come to drink, no longer a calf, but a lovely brocket, with its brow antlers making its first two points. And in the third year he watched for it again, no brocket now but a splendid spayade, which to its brows had added its shooting bays; and in the fourth year the spayade had become a proud young staggarde, with its trays above its bays. And in the fifth year the staggarde was a full-named stag, crowned with the exquisite twin crowns of its crockets, surmounting tray and bay and brow. And Harding lying hidden gloried in it, thinking, "All your points now but two, my quarry. And next year you shall add the beam to the crown, and I will hunt my hart."
Now at the time when Harding first saw the calf, and the ruin of the castle across the ferry was only a ruin, not fit for habitation, it was nevertheless inhabited by the Proud Rosalind, who dwelt there without kith or kin. And if time had crumbled the castle to its last nobility, so that all that was strong and beautiful in it was preserved and, as it were, exposed in nakedness to the eyes of men: so in her, who was the ruins of her family, was preserved and exposed all that had been most noble, strong and beautiful in her race. She was as poor as she was friendless, but her pride outmatched both these things. So great was her pride that she learned to endure shame for the sake of it. She had a tall straight figure that was both strong and graceful, and she carried herself like a tree. Her hair was neither bronze nor gold nor copper, yet seemed to be an alloy of all the precious mines of the turning year—the vigorous dusky gold of November elms, the rust of dead bracken made living by heavy rains, the color of beechmast drenched with sunlight after frost, and all the layers of glory on the boughs before it fell, when it needed neither sun nor dew to make it glow. All these could be seen in different lights upon her heavy hair, which when unbound hung as low as her knees. Her thick brows were dark gold, and her fearless eyes dark gray with gold gleams in them. They may have been reflections from her lashes, or even from her skin, which had upon it the bloom of a golden plum. Dim ages since her fathers had been kings in Sussex; gradually their estate had diminished, but with the lessening of their worldly possessions they burnished the brighter the possession of their honor, and bred the care of it in their children jealously. So it came to pass that Rosalind, who possessed less than any serf or yeoman in the countryside, trod among these as though she were a queen, dreaming of a degree which she had never known, ignored or shrugged at by those whom she accounted her equals, insulted or gibed at by those she thought her inferiors. For the dwellers in the neighboring hamlets, to whom the story of her fathers' fathers was only a legend, saw in her just a shabby girl, less worthy than themselves because much poorer, whose pride and very beauty aroused their mockery and wrath. They did not dispute her possession of the castle. For what to them were four vast roofless walls, enclosing a square of greensward underfoot and another of blue air overhead, and pierced with doorless doorways and windowless casements that let in all the lights of all the quarters of the sky? What to them were these traces of old chambers etched on the surface of the old gray stone, these fragments of lovely arches that were but channels for the winds? In the thick of the great towered gateway one little room remained above the arch, and here the maiden slept. And all her company was the ghosts of her race. She saw them feasting in the halls of the air, and moving on the courtyard of the grass. At night in the galleries of the stars she heard their singing; and often, looking through the empty windows over the flats to which the great west wall dropped down, she saw them ride in cavalcade out of the sunset, from battle or hunt or tourney. But the peasants, who did not know what she saw and heard, preferred their snug squalor to this shivering nobility, and despised the girl who, in a fallen fortress, defended her life from theirs.
At first she had kept her distance with a kind of graciousness, but one day in her sixteenth year a certain boor met her under the castle wall as she was returning with sticks for kindling, and was struck by her free and noble carriage; for though she was little more than a child, through all her rags she shone with the grace and splendor not only of her race, but of the wild life she lived on the hills when she was not in her ruins. She was as strong and fine as a young hind, and could run like any deer upon the Downs, and climb like any squirrel. And the dull-sighted peasant, seeing as though for the first time her untamed beauty, on an impulse offered to kiss her and make her his woman.
Rosalind stared at him like one aroused from sleep with a rude blow. The color flamed in her cheek. "YOU to accost so one of my blood?" she cried. "Mongrel, go back to your kennel!"
The lout gaped between rage and mortification, and, muttering, made a step towards her; but suddenly seeming to think better of it, stumbled away.
Then Rosalind, lifting her glowing face, as beautiful as sunset with its double flush, rose under gold, saw Harding the Red Hunter gazing at her. Some business had brought him over the ferry, and on his road he had lit upon the suit and its rejection. Rosalind, her spirit chafed with what had passed, returned his gaze haughtily. But he maintained his steadfast look as though he had been hewn out of stone; and presently, impatient and disdainful, she turned away. Then, and instantly, Harding pursued his way in silence. And Rosalind grew somehow aware that he had determined to stand at gaze until her eyes were lowered. Thereupon she classed his presumption with that of the other who had dared address her, and hated him for taking part against her. Near as their dwellings were, divided only by the river and a breadth of water-meadow, their intercourse had always been of the slightest, for Harding possessed a reserve as great as her own. But from this hour their intercourse ceased entirely.
The boor mis-spread the tale of her overweening pride through the hamlet, and when next she appeared there she was greeted with derision.
"This is she that holds herself unfit to mate with an honest man!" cried some. And others, "Nay, do but see the silken gown of the great lady Rosalind, see the fine jewels of her!" "She thinks she outshines the Queen of Bramber's self!" scoffed a woman. And a man demanded, "What blood's good enough to mix with hers, if ours be not?"
"A king's!" flashed Rosalind. And even as she spoke the jeering throng parted to let one by that elbowed his way among them; and a second time she saw the Red Hunter come to halt and fix her before all the people. Now this time, she vowed silently, you may gaze till night fall and day rise again, Red Man, if you think to lower my eyes in the presence of these! So she stood and looked him in the face like a queen, all her spirit nerving her, and the people knew it to be battle between them. Harding's great arms were folded across his breast, and on his countenance was no expressiveness at all; but a strange light grew and brightened in his eyes, till little by little all else was blurred and hazy in the girl's sight, and blue fire seemed to lap her from her tawny hair to her bare feet. Then she knew nothing except that she must look away or burn. And her eyes fell. Harding walked past her as he had done before, and not till he was out of hearing did the bystanders begin their cruelty.
"A king's blood for the lady that droops to a common smith!" cried they.
"She shall swing his hammer for a scepter!" cried they.
"Shall sit on's anvil for a throne!" cried they.
"Shall queen it in a leathern apron o' Sundays!" cried they.
Rosalind fled amid their howls of laughter. She hated them all, and far beyond them all she hated him who had lowered her head in their sight.
It was after this that the Proud Rosalind—
(But here, without even trouble to finish his sentence, Martin Pippin suddenly thrust with his foot at the seat of the swing, nearly dislodging Jane with the action; who screamed and clutched first at the ropes, and next at the branches as she went up, and last of all at Martin as she came down. She clutched him so piteously that in pure pity he clutched her, and lifting her bodily out of her peril set her on his knee.
Martin: (with great concern): Are you better, Mistress Jane?
Jane: Where are your manners, Master Pippin?
Martin: My mother mislaid them before I was born. But are you better now?
Jane: I am not sure. I was very much upset.
Martin: So was I.
Jane: It was all your doing.
Martin: I could have sworn it was half yours.
Jane: Who disturbed the swing, pray?
Martin: Every effect proceeds from its cause. The swing was disturbed because I was disturbed.
Jane: Every cause once had its effect. What effected your disturbance, Master Pippin?
Martin: Yours, Mistress Jane.
Jane: Mine?
Martin: Confess that you were disturbed.
Jane: Yes, and with good cause.
Martin: I can't doubt it. Yet that was the mischief. I could find no logical cause for your disturbance. And an illogical world proceeds from confusion to chaos. For want of a little logic my foot and your swing passed out of control.
Jane: The logic had only to be asked for, and it would have been forthcoming.
Martin: Is it too late to ask?
Jane: It is never too late to be reasonable. But why am I sitting on— Why am I sitting here?
Martin: For the best of reasons. You are sitting where you are sitting because the swing is so disturbed. Please teach me to be reasonable, dear Mistress Jane. Why were you disturbed?
Jane: Very well. I was naturally greatly disturbed to learn that your heroine hated your hero. Because it is your errand to relate love-stories; and I cannot see the connection between love and hate. Could two things more antagonistic conclude in union?
Martin: Yes.
Jane: What?
Martin: A button and buttonhole. For one is something and the other nothing, and what in the very nature of things could be more antagonistic than these?
So saying, he tore a button from his shirt and put it into her hand. "Don't drop it," said Martin, "because I haven't another; and besides, every button-hole prefers its own button. Yet I will never ask you to re-unite them until my tale proves to your satisfaction that out of antagonisms unions can spring."
"Very well," said Jane; and she took out of her pocket a neat little housewife and put the button carefully inside it. Then she said, "The swing is quite still now."
"But are you sure you feel better?" said Martin.
"Yes, thank you," said Jane.)
It was after this (said Martin) that the Proud Rosalind became known by her title. It was fastened on her in derision, and when she heard it she set her lips and thought: "What they speak in mockery shall be the truth." And the more men sought to shame her, the prouder she bore herself. She ceased all commerce with them from this time. So for five years she lived in great loneliness and want.
But gradually she came to know that even this existence of friendless want was not to be life, but a continual struggle-with-death. For she had no resources, and was put to bitter shifts if she would live. Hunger nosed at her door, and she had need of her pride to clothe her. For the more she went wan and naked, the more men mocked her to see her hold herself so high; and out of their hearts she shut that charity which she would never have endured of them. If she had gone kneeling to their doors with pitiful hands, saying, "I starve, not having wherewithal to eat; I perish, not having wherewithal to cover me"—they would perhaps have fed and clothed her, aglow with self-content. But they were not prompt with the charity which warms the object only and not the donor; and she on her part tried to appear as though she needed nothing at their hands.
One evening when the woods were in full leaf, and summer on the edge of its zenith, Proud Rosalind walked among the trees seeking green herbs for soup. She had wandered far afield, because there were no woods near the castle, standing on its high ground above the open flats and the river beyond. But gazing over the water she could see the groves and crests upon the hills where some sustenance was. The swift way was over the river, but there was no boat to serve her except Harding's; and this was a service she had never asked of old, and lately would rather have died than ask. So she took daily to the winding roads that led to a distant bridge and the hills with their forests. This day her need was at its sorest. When she had gathered a meager crop she sat down under a tree, and began to sort out the herbs upon her knees. One tender leaf she could not resist taking between her teeth, that had had so little else of late to bite on; and as she did so coarse laughter broke upon her. It was her rude suitor who had chanced across her path, and he mocked at her, crying, "This is the Proud Rosalind that will not eat at an honest man's board, choosing rather to dine after the high fashion of the kine and asses!" Then from his pouch he snatched a crust of bread and flung it to her, and said, "Proud Rosalind, will you stoop for your supper?"
She rose, letting the precious herbs drop from her lap, and she trod them into the earth as weeds gathered at hazard, so that the putting of the leaf between her lips might wear an idle aspect; and then she walked away, with her head very high. But she was nearly desperate at leaving them there, and when she was alone her pain of hunger increased beyond all bounds. And she sat down on the limb of a great beech and leaned her brow against his mighty body, and shut her eyes, while the light changed in the sky. And presently the leaves of the forest were lit by the moon instead of the sun, and the spaces in the top boughs were dark blue instead of saffron, and the small clouds were no longer fragments of amber, but bits of mottled pearl seen through sea-water. But Rosalind witnessed none of these slow changes, and when after a great while she lifted her faint head, she saw only that the day was changed to night. And on the other side of the beech-tree, touched with moonlight, a motionless white stag stood watching her. It was a hart of the sixth year, and stood already higher than any hart of the twelfth; full five foot high it stood, and its grand soft shining flanks seemed to be molded of marble for their grandeur, and silk for their smoothness, and moonlight for their sheen. Its new antlers were branching towards their yearly strength, and the triple-pointed crowns rose proudly from the beam that was their last perfection. The eyes of the girl and the beast met full, and neither wavered. The hart came to her noiselessly, and laid its muzzle on her hair, and when she put her hand on its pure side it arched its noble neck and licked her cheek. Then, stepping as proudly and as delicately as Rosalind's self, it moved on through the trees; and she followed it.
The forest changed from beech to pine and fir. It deepened and grew strange to her. She did not know it. And the light of the sky turned here from silver to gray, and she felt about her the stir of unseen things. But she looked neither to the right nor the left, but followed the snow-white hart that went before her. It brought her at last to its own drinking-place, and as soon as she saw it old rumors gathered themselves into a truth, and she knew that this was the lost Wishing-Pool. And she remembered that this night was Midsummer Eve, and by the position of the ghostly moon she saw it was close on midnight. So she knelt down by the edge of the mere, and stretched her hands above it, the palms to the stars, and in a low clear voice she made her prayer.
"Whatever spirit dwells under these waters," said she, "I know not whether you are a power for good or ill. But if it is true that you will answer in this hour the need of any that calls on you—oh, Spirit, my need is very great to-night. Hunger is bitter in my body, and my strength is nearly wasted. A hind cast me his crust to-day, and five hours I have battled with myself not to creep back to the place where it still lies and eat of that vile bread. I do not fear to die, but I fear to die of my hunger lest they sneer at the last of my race brought low to so mean a death. Neither will I die by my own act, lest they think my courage broken by these breaking days. On my knees," said she, "I beseech you to send me in some wise a little money, if it be but a handful of pennies now and then throughout the year, so that I may keep my head unbowed. Or if this is too much to ask, and even of you the asking is not easy, then send some high and sudden accident of death to blot me out before I grow too humble, and the lofty spirits of my fathers deny one whose spirit ends as lowly as their dust. Death or life I beg of you, and I care not which you send."
Then clasping her hands tightly, she called twice more her plea across the mere: "Spirit of these waters, grant me life or death! Oh, Spirit, grant me life or death!"
There was a stir in the forest as she made an end, and she remained stock still, waiting and wondering. But though she knelt there till the moon had crossed the bar of midnight, nothing happened.
Then the white hart, which had lain beside the water while she prayed, rose silently and drank; and when it was satisfied, laid once more its muzzle on her hair and licked her cheek again and moved away. Not a twig snapped under its slender stepping. Its whiteness was soon covered by the blackness.
Faint and exhausted, Rosalind arose. She dragged herself through the wood and presently found the broad road that curled down the deserted hill and over the bridge, and at last by a branching lane to her ruined dwelling. The door of her tower creaked desolately to and fro a little, open as she had left it. She pushed it further ajar and stumbled in and up the narrow stair. But the pale moonlight entered her chamber with her, silvering the oaken stump that was her table; and there, where there had been nothing, she beheld two little heaps of copper coins.
The gold year waned, and the next passed from white to green; and in the gold Harding began to hunt his hart, and by the green had not succeeded in bringing it to bay. Twice he had seen it at a distance on the hills, and once had started it from cover in Coombe Wood and followed it through the Denture and Stammers, Great Bottom and Gumber, Earthem Wood and Long Down, Nore Hill and Little Down; and at Punchbowl Green he lost it. He did not care. A long chase had whetted him, and he had waited so long that he was willing to wait another year, and if need were two or three, for his royal quarry. He knew it must be his at last, and he loved it the more for the speed and strength and cunning with which it defied him. It had a secret lair he could never discover; but one day that secret too should be his own. Meanwhile his blood was heated, and the Red Hunter dreamed of the hart and of one other thing.
And while he dreamed Proud Rosalind grew glad and strong on her miraculous dole of money, that was always to her hand when she had need of it. Fear went out of her life, for she knew certainly now that she was in the keeping of unseen powers, and would not lack again. And little by little she too began to build a dream out of her pride; for she thought, I am all my fathers' house, and there will be no honor to it more except that which can come through me. And whenever tales went about of the fame of the fair young Queen of Bramber Castle, and the crowning of her name in this tourney and in that, or of the great lords and princes that would have died for one smile of her (yet her smiles came easily, and her kisses too, men said), Rosalind knit her brows, and her longing grew a little stronger, and she thought: If arrows and steel might once flash lightnings about my father's daughter, and cleave the shadows that have hung their webs about my fathers' hearth!
She now began to put by a little hoard of pennies, for she meant to buy flax to spin the finest of linen for her body, and purple for sleeves for her arms, and scarlet leather for shoes for her feet, and gold for a fillet for her head; and so, attired at last as became her birth, one day to attend a tourney where perhaps some knight would fight his battle in her name. And she had no other thought in this than glory to her dead race. But her precious store mounted slowly; and she had laid by nothing but the money for the fine linen for her robe, when a thing happened that shattered her last foothold among men.
For suddenly all the countryside was alive with a strange rumor. Some one had seen a hart upon the hills, a hart of twelve points, fit for royal hunting. Kings will hunt no lesser game than this. But this of all harts was surely born to be hunted only by a maiden queen, for, said the rumor, it was as white as snow. Such a hart had never before been heard of, and at first the tale of it was not believed. But the tale was repeated from mouth to mouth until at last all men swore to it and all winds carried it; and amongst others some wind of the Downs bore it across the land from Arun to Adur, and so it reached the ears of Queen Maudlin of Bramber. Then she, a creature of quick whims, who was sated with the easy conquests of her beauty, yet eager always for triumphs to cap triumphs, devised a journey from Adur to Arun, and a great summer season of revelry to end in an autumn chase. "And," said she, "we will have joustings and dancings in beauty's honor, but she whose knight at the end of all brings her the antlers of the snow-white hart shall be known for ever in Sussex as the queen of beauty; since, once I have hunted it, the hart will be hart-royal." For this, as perhaps you know, dear maidens, is the degree of any hart that has been chased by royalty.
However, before the festival was undertaken, the Queen of Bramber must needs know if the Arun could show any habitation worthy of her; and her messengers went and came with a tale of a noble castle fallen into ruins, but with its four-square walls intact, and a sward within so smooth and fair that it seemed only to await the coming of archers and dancers. So the Queen called a legion of workmen and bade them go there and build a dwelling in one part of the green court for her to stay in with her company. "And see it be done by midsummer," said she. "Castles, madam," said the head workman, "are not built in a month, or even in two." "Then for a frolic we'll be commoners," said the Queen, "and you shall build on the sward not a castle, but a farm." So the workmen hurried away, and set to work; and by June they had raised within the castle walls the most beautiful farmhouse in Sussex; and over the door made a room fit for a queen.
But alas for Proud Rosalind!
When the men first came she confronted them angrily and commanded them to depart from her fathers' halls. And the head workman looked at the ruin and her rags and said, "What halls, girl? and where are these fathers? and who are you?"—and bade his men get about the Queen's work. And Rosalind was helpless. The men from the Adur asked the people of the Arun about her, and what rights she had to be where she was. And they, being unfriendly to her, said, "None. She is a beggar with a bee in her bonnet, and thinks she was once a queen because her housing was once a castle. She has been suffered to stay as long as it was unwanted; but since your Queen wants it, now let her go." And they came in a body to drive her forth. But they got there too late. The Proud Rosalind had abandoned her conquered stronghold, and where she lived from this time nobody knew. She was still seen on the roads and hills now and again, and once as she passed through Bury on washing-day the women by the river called to her, "Where do you live now, Proud Rosalind, instead of in a castle?" And Rosalind glanced down at the kneeling women and said in her clear voice, "I live in a castle nobler than Bramber's, or even than Amberley's; I live in the mightiest castle in Sussex, and Queen Maudlin herself could not build such another to live in."
"Then you'll doubtless be making her a great entertainment there, Proud Rosalind," scoffed the washers.
"I entertain none but the kings of the earth there," said Rosalind. And she made to walk on.
"Why then," mocked they, "you'd best seek one out to hunt the white hart in your name this autumn, and crown you queen over young Maudlin, Proud Rosalind."
And Rosalind stopped and looked at them, longing to say, "The white hart? What do you mean?" Yet for all her longing to know, she could not bring herself to ask anything of them. But as though her thoughts had taken voice of themselves, she heard the sharp questions uttered aloud, "What white hart, chatterers? Of what hunt are you talking?" And there in mid-stream stood Harding in his boat, keeping it steady with the great pole of the oar.
"Why, Red Boatman," said they, "did you not know that the Queen of Bramber was coming to make merry at Amberley?"
"Ay," said Harding.
"And that our proud lady Rosalind, having, it seems, found a grander castle to live in, has given hers up to young Maudlin?"
Harding glanced to and from the scornful tawny girl and said, "Well?"
"Well, Red Boatman! On Midsummer Eve the Queen comes with her court, and on Midsummer Day there will be a great tourney to open the revels that will last, so they say, all through summer. But the end of it all is to be a great chase, for a white hart of twelve points has been seen on the hills, and the Queen will hunt it in autumn till some lucky lord kneels at her feet with its antlers; and him, they say, she'll marry."
Then Harding once more looked at Rosalind over the water, and she flung back a look at him, and each was surprised to see dismay on the other's brow. And Harding thought, "Is she angry because SHE is not the Queen of the chase?" And Rosalind, "Would HE be the lord who kneels to Queen Maudlin?" But neither knew that the trouble in each was really because their precious secret was now public, and the white hart endangered. And Rosalind's thought was, "It shall be no Queen's quarry!" And Harding's, "It shall be no man's but mine!" Then Harding plied his way to the ferry, and Rosalind went hers to none knew where; though some had tried vainly to track her.
In due course June passed its middle, and the Queen rode under the Downs from Bramber to Amberley. And early on Midsummer Eve, while her servants made busy about the coming festival, Queen Maudlin went over the fields to the waterside and lay in the grass looking to Bury, and teased some seven of her court, each of whom had sworn to bring her the Crown of Beauty at his sword's point on the morrow. Her four maidens were with her, all maids of great loveliness. There was Linoret who was like morning dew on grass in spring, and Clarimond queenly as day at its noon, and Damarel like a rose grown languorous of its own grace, and Amelys, mysterious as the spirit of dusk with dreams in its hair. But Maudlin was the pale gold wonder of the dawn, a creature of ethereal light, a vision of melting stars and wakening flowers. And she delighted in making seem cheap the palpable prettiness of this, or too robust the fuller beauty of that, or dim and dull the elusive charm of such-an-one. She would have scorned to set her beauty to compete with those who were not beautiful, even as a proved knight would scorn to joust with an unskilled boor. So now amongst her beautiful attendants, knowing that in their midst her greater beauty shone forth a diamond among crystals, she laughed at her seven lovers; and her four friends laughed with her.
"You do well, Queen Maudlin, to make merry," said one of the knights, "for I know none that gains so much service for so little portion. What will you give to-morrow's victor?"
"What will to-morrow's victor think his due?" said she.
The seven said in a breath, "A kiss!" and the five laughed louder than ever.
Then Maudlin said, "For so great an honor as victory, I should feel ashamed to bestow a thing of such little worth."
"Do you call that thing a little worth," said one, "which to us were more than a star plucked out of heaven?"
"The thing, it is true," said Maudlin, "has two values. Those who are over-eager make it a thing of naught, those from whom it is hard-won render it priceless. But, sirs, you are all too eager, I could scatter you baubles by the hour and leave you still desiring. But if ever I wooed reluctance to receive at last my solitary favor, I should know I was bestowing a jewel."
"When did Maudlin ever meet reluctance?" sighed one, the youngest.
A long shadow fell upon her where she lay in the grass, and she looked up to see the great form of Harding passing at a little distance.
"Who is that?" said she.
"It must be he they call the Red Smith," said Damarel idly.
"He looks a rough, silent creature," remarked Amelys. And Clarimond added in loud and insolent tones, "He knows little enough of kissings, I would wager this clasp."
"It's one I've a fancy for," said young Queen Maudlin. "Red Smith!" called she.
Harding turned at the sweet sound of her voice, and came and stood beside her among the group of girls and knights.
"Have you come from my castle?" said she, smiling up at him with her dawn-blue eyes.
"Ay," he answered.
"What drew you there, big man? My serving-wench?"
The Red Smith stared down at her light alluring loveliness. "Serving-wenches do not draw me."
"What metal then? Gold?" Maudlin tossed him a yellow disc from her purse. He let it fall and lie.
"No, nor gold." His eyes traveled over her gleaming locks. "The things you name are too cheap," said he.
Maudlin smiled a little and raised herself, till she stood, fair and slender, as high as his shoulder.
"What thing draws you, Red Smith?"
"Steel." And he showed her a fine sword-blade, lacking its hilt. "I was sent for to mend this against the morrow."
"I know that blade," said Maudlin, "it was snapped in my cause. Have you the hilt too?"
"In my pouch," said Harding, his hand upon it.
Hers touched his fingers delicately. "I will see it."
He brushed her hand aside and unbuttoned his pouch; but as he drew out the hilt of the broken sword, she caught a glimpse of that within which held her startled gaze.
"What jewels are those?" she asked quickly.
"Old relics," Harding said with sudden gruffness.
"Show them to me!"
Reluctantly he obeyed, and brought forth a ring, a circlet, and a girdle of surpassing workmanship, wrought in gold thick-crusted with emeralds. A cry of wonder went up from all the maidens.
"There's something else," said Maudlin; and without waiting thrust her hand into the bottom of the pouch and drew out a mesh of silver. It was so fine that it could be held and hidden in her two hands; yet when it fell apart it was a garment, as supple as rich silk. The four maids touched it softly and looked their longings.
"Are these your handicraft?" said Maudlin.
"Mine?" Harding uttered a short laugh. "Not I or any man can make such things."
"You are right," said Maudlin. "Wayland's self might acknowledge them. Smith, I will buy them of you."
"You cannot give me my price."
"Gold I know does not tempt you." She smiled and came close beside him.
"Then do not offer it."
"Shall it be steel?"
Harding's eyes swept her flower-like beauty. "Not from Queen Maudlin."
"True. My bid is costlier."
"Name it."
"A kiss from my mouth."
At the sound of his laughter the rose flowed into her cheek.
"What, a bauble for my jewel, too-eager lady?" he said harshly. "Do the women of this land hold themselves so light? In mine men carve their kisses with the sword. Hark ye, young Queen! set a better value on that red mouth if you'd continue to have it valued."
"I could have you whipped for this," said Maudlin.
"I do not think so," Harding answered, and stepped down the river-bank into his waiting boat.
"I keep my clasp," said Clarimond.
Seven men sprang hotly to their feet. "What's your will, Queen?"
"Nothing," said Maudlin slowly, as she watched him row over the water. "Let the smith go. This test was between him and me and no man's business else. Well, he is of a temper to come through fire unmelted." She flashed a smile upon the seven that made them tremble. "But he is a mannerless churl, we will not think of him. Which among YOU would spurn my kiss?" She offered her mouth in turn, and seven flames passed over its scarlet. Maudlin laughed a little and beckoned her watching maids. "Well!" she said, taking the path to the castle, "He that had had strength to refuse me might have worn my favor to-morrow and for ever."
And meanwhile by the further river-bank came Rosalind, with mushrooms in her skirt. And as she walked by the water in the evening she looked across to her lost castle-walls, and touched the pennies in her pouch and dreamed, while the sun dressed the running flood in his royalest colors.
"Linen and purple and scarlet and gold," mused she; "and so I might sit there to-morrow among the rest. But linen and purple!" she said in scorn, "what should they profit my fathers' house? It is no silken daughter we lack, but a son of steel."
And as she pondered a shadow crossed her, and out of his boat stepped Harding, new from his encounter with the Queen. He did not glance at her nor she at him; but the gleam of the broken weapon he carried cut for a single instant across her sight, and her hands hungered for it.
"A sword!" thought she. "Ay, but an arm to wield the sword. Nay, if I had the sword it may be I could find an arm to wield it." She dropped her chin on her breast, and brooded on the vanishing shape of the Red Smith. "If I had been my fathers' son—oh!" cried she, shaken with new dreams, "what would I not give to the man who would strike a blow for our house?"
Then she recalled what day it was. A year of miracles and changes had sped over her life; if she desired new miracles, this was the night to ask them.
So close on midnight Proud Rosalind once more crept up to Rewell Wood; and on its beechen skirts the white hart came to her. It came now as to a friend, not to a stranger. And she threw her arm over its neck, and they walked together. As they walked it lowered its noble antlers so cunningly that not a twig snapped from the boughs; and its antlers were as beautiful as the boughs with their branches and twigs, and to each crown it had added not one, but two more crockets, so that now its points were sixteen. Safe under its guard the maiden ventured into the mysteries of the hour, and when they came to the mere the hart lay down and she knelt beside it with her brow on its soft panting neck, and thought awhile how she would shape her wish. And feeling the strength of its sinews she said aloud, "Oh, champion among stags! were there a champion among men to match you, I think even I could love him. Yet love is not my prayer. I do not pray for myself." And then she stood upright and stretched her hands towards the water and said again, less in supplication than command:
"Spirit, you hear—I do not pray for myself. Of old it may be maidens often came in sport or fear, to make a mid-summer pastime of their love-dreams. Oh, Spirit! of love I ask nothing for myself. But if you will send me a man to strike one blow in my name that is my fathers' name, he may have of me what he will!"
Never so proudly yet had the Proud Rosalind held herself as when she lifted her radiant face to the moon and sent her low clear call thrice over the mystic waters. Gloriously she stood with arms extended, as though she would give welcome to any hero stepping through the night to consummate her wish. But none came. Only the subdued rustling that had stirred the woods a year ago whispered out of the dark and died to silence.
The arms of the Proud Rosalind dropped to her sides.
"Is the time not yet?" said she, "and will it never be? Why, then, let me belong for ever to the champion that strikes for me to-morrow in the lists. A sorry champion," said she a wan smile, "yet I will hold me bound to him according to my vow. But first I must win him a sword."
Then she kissed the white hart between the eyes and said, "Go where you will. I shall be gone till daylight." And it rose up to run the moonlit hills, and she went down through the trees, and left the Wishing-Pool to its unruffled peace.
Straight down towards sleeping Bury Rosalind went, full of her purpose; and after an hour passed through the silent village.
Her errand was not wholly easy to her, but she thought, "I do not go to ask favors, but plain dealings; and it must be done secretly or not at all." As she came near the ferry a red glow broke on her vision.
"Does the water burn?" she said, and quickened her steps. To her surprise she saw that Harding's forge was busy; the light she had seen sprang from it. She had expected to find it locked and silent, but now the little space it held in the night was lit with fire and resounded with the stroke of the Red Smith's hammer. Proud Rosalind stood fast as though he were fashioning a spell to chain her eyes. And so he was, for he hammered on a sword.
He did not turn his head at her approach; but when at last she stood beside his door, and did not move away, he spoke to her.
"You walk late," said he.
"May not people walk late," said she, "as well as work late?"
Without answering he set himself to his task again and heeded her no more. "Smith!" she cried imperiously.
"What then?"
"I came to speak with you."
"Even so?" She barely heard the words for the din of his great hammer.
"You are unmannerly, Smith."
"Speak then," said he, dropping his tools, "and never forget, maid, that it is not I invited this encounter."
At that she cried out hotly, "Does not your shop invite trade?"
"Ay; but what's that to you?"
"My only purpose in talking with you," she said in a flame of wrath. "I require what you have, but I would rather buy it of any man than you."
"What do you require?"
"That!" She pointed to the sword.
"I cannot sell it. It is a young knight's blade I am mending against the jousting."
"Have you no other?"
"You cannot give me my price," said the Red Smith.
She took from her girdle the little purse containing all her store. "Do you think I am here to bargain? There's more than your price."
"However much it be," said Harding, "it is too little."
"Then say no more that I cannot buy of you, but rather that you will not sell to me."
"And yet that is as the Proud Rosalind shall please."
She flushed deeply, and as though in shame of seeming ashamed said firmly, "No, Smith, it is not in my hands. For I have offered you every penny I possess."
"I do not ask for pence." Harding left his anvil and stepped outside and stood close, gazing hard upon her face. "You have a thing I will take in exchange for my sword, a very simple thing. Women part with it most lightly, I have learned. The loveliest hold it cheap at the price of a golden gawd. How easily then will you barter it for an inch or so of steel!"
"What need of so many words?" she said with a scornful lip, that quivered in her own despite at his nearness. "Name the thing you want."
"A kiss from your mouth, Proud Rosalind."
It was as though the request had turned her into ice. When she could speak she said, "Smith, for your inch of steel you have asked what I would not part with to ransom my soul."
She turned and left him and Harding went back to his work and laughed softly in his beard. "Dream on, my gold queen up yonder," said he, and blew on his waning fires. "You are not the metal I work in," said he, and the river rang again to his hammer on the steel.
But Rosalind went rapidly down to the waterside saying in her heart, "Now I will see whether I cannot get me a lordlier weapon of a better craftsman than you, and at my own price, Red Smith." And when she had come to the ferry she laid her full purse on the bank and cried softly into the night:
"Wayland Smith, give me a sword!"
And then she went away for awhile, and paced the fields till the first light glimmered on the east; and not daring to wait longer for fear of encountering early risers, she turned back to the ferry. And there, shining in the dawn, she found such a blade as made the father in her soul exult. In all its glorious fashioning and splendid temper the hand of the god was manifest. And in the grass beside it lay her purse, of its full store lightened by one penny-piece.
Now to this tale of legends revived and then forgotten, gossips' tales of Wishing-Pools and Snow-white Harts and a God who worked in the dark, we must begin to add the legend of the Rusty Knight. It lasted little longer than the three months of that strange summer of sports within the castle-walls of Amberley. It was at the jousting on Midsummer Day that he first was seen. The lists were open and the roll of knights had answered to their names, and cried in all men's ears their ladies' praises; and nine in ten cried Maudlin. And as the last knight spoke, there suddenly stood in the great gateway an unknown man with his vizard closed, and his coming was greeted with a roar of laughter. For he was clothed from head to foot in antique arms, battered and rusted like old pots and pans that have seen a twelvemonths' weather in a ditch. Out of the merriment occasioned by his appearance, certain of the spectators began to cry, "A champion! a champion!" And others nudged with their elbows, chuckling, "It is the Queen's jester."
But the newcomer stood his ground unflinchingly, and when he could be heard cried fiercely, "They who call me jester shall find they jest before their time. I claim by my kingly birth to take part in this day's fray; and men shall meet me to their rue!"
"By what name shall we know you?" he was asked.
"You shall call me the Knight of the Royal Heart," he said.
"And whose cause do you serve?"
"Hers whose beauty outshines the five-fold beauty in the Queen's Gallery," said he, "hers who was mistress here and wrongly ousted—the most peerless lady of Sussex, Proud Rosalind."
With that the stranger drew forth and flourished a blade of so surpassing a kind that the knights, in whom scorn had vanquished mirth, found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim; and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of the Rusty Knight. For by this name only was he spoken thereafter.
Now you may think that the imperious stranger who warned his opponents against laughing before their time, might well have been warned against crowing before his. And alas! it transpired that he crowed not as the cock crows, who knows the sun will rise; for at the first clash he fell, almost unnoticed. And when the combatants disengaged, he had disappeared. He was a subject for much mirth that evening; though the men rankled for his sword and the women for a sight of his lady.
But from this day there was not a jousting held in Maudlin's revels at which the Rusty Knight did not appear; and none from which he bore away the crown. The procedure was always the same: at the last instant he appeared in his ignominious arms, and stung the mockers to silence by the glory of his sword and his undaunted proclamation of his lady. So ardent was his manner that it was difficult not to believe him a conqueror among men and her the loveliest of women, until the fray began; when he was instantly overcome, and in the confusion managed to escape. He was so cunning in this that though traps were laid to catch him he was never traced. By degrees he became, instead of a joke, a thorn in the flesh. It was the women now who itched to see his face, and the men who desired to find out the Proud Rosalind; for by his repeated assertion her beauty came to be believed in, and if the ladies still spoke slightingly of her, the lords in their thoughts did not. But the summer drew to its close without unraveling the mystery. The Rusty Knight was never followed nor the Proud Rosalind found. And now they were on the eve of a different hunting.
For now all the days were to be given up to the pursuit of the rumored hart, whom none had yet beheld; and Queen Maudlin said, "For a month we will hunt by day and dance by night, and if by that time no man can boast of bringing the hart to bay and no woman of owning his antlers, we will acknowledge ourselves outwitted; and so go back to Adur. And it may prove that we have been brought to Arun by an idle tale, to hunt a myth; but be that as it may, see to your bowstrings, for to-morrow we ride forth."
And the men laid by their swords and filled their quivers.
And in the midnight Rosalind came once more from her secret lair to Bury, and laying her purse by the ferry called softly:
"Wayland Smith, give me a bow!"
And in the dawn, before people were astir, she found a bow the unlike of any fashioned by mortal craft, and a quiverful of true arrows; and for these the god had taken his penny fee.
On a lovely day of autumn the chase began. And the red deer and the red fox started from their covers; and the small rabbits stopped their kitten-play on the steep warrens of the Downs, and fled into their burrows; and birds whirred up in screaming coveys, and the kestrel hovered high and motionless on the watch. There was game in plenty, and many men were tempted and forgot the prize they sought. The hunt separated, some going this way and some that. And in the evening all met again in Amberley. And some had game to show and some had none. And one had seen the hart.
When he said so a cry went up from the company, and they pressed round to hear his tale, and it was a strange one.
"For," said he, "where Great Down clothes itself with the North Wood I saw a flash against the dark of the trees, and out of them bounded the very hart, taller than any hart I ever dreamed of, and, as the tale has told, as pure as snow; and the crockets spring from its crowns like rays from a summer cloud. I could not count them, but its points are more than twelve. When it saw me it stood motionless, and trembling with joy I fitted my arrow to the string; but even as I did so out of the trees ran another creature, as strange as the white hart. It was none other than the Rusty Knight; I knew him by his battered vizard, which was closed. But for the rest he wore now, not rust, but rags—a tattered jerkin in place of battered mail. Yet in his hands was a bow which among weapons could only be matched by his sword. He took his stand beside the snow-white hart, and cried in that angry voice we have all heard, These crowns grow only to the glory of the Proud Rosalind, the most peerless daughter of Sussex, and no woman but she shall ever boast of them!' And before I could move or answer for surprise, he had set his arrow to his bow, and drawn the string back to his shoulder, and let fly. It was well I did not start aside, or it might have hit me; for I never saw an arrow fly so wild of its mark. But the whole circumstance amazed me too much for quick action, and before I could come up and chastise this unskillful archer, or even aim at the prize which stood beside him, he and the hart had plunged through the wood again, the man running swiftfoot as the beast; and when I followed I could not find them, and unhappily my dogs were astray."
The strange tale stung the tempers of all listeners, both men and women.
"Well, now," laughed Maudlin, "it has at least been seen that the hart is the whitest of harts."
"But it has not yet been seen," fumed Clarimond, "that this Rosalind is the most beautiful of women."
"Nor have we seen," said the knight who told the tale, "who it is that insults our manhood with valiant words and no deeds to prove them. Yet with such a sword and such a bow a man might prove anything."
The next day all rode forth on fire with eagerness. And at the end of it another knight brought back the selfsame tale. He sword that in the tattered archer was no harm at all but his arrogance, since he was clearly incapable of hitting where he aimed. But his very presence and his swift escape, running beside the hart, made failure seem double; for the derision he excited recoiled on the deriders, who could not bring this contemptible foe to book. After that day many saw him, sometimes at a great distance, sometimes near enough to be lashed by his insolent tongue. He always kept beside the coveted quarry, as though to guard it, and ran when it ran, with incredible speed; but once when he flagged after a longer chase than usual, he had been seen to leap on its back, and so they escaped together. From dawn to dusk through that bright month of autumn the man and the hart were hunted in vain; and in all that while their lair was never discovered. It was now taken for granted that where one would be the other would be; and in all likelihood Proud Rosalind also.
At last the final day of the month and the chase arrived, and Maudlin spoke to her mortified company. Among them all she was the only one who laughed now, for her nature was like that of running water, reflecting all things, retaining none; she could never retain her disappointments longer than a day, or her affections either.
"Sirs and dames," said she, "I see by your clouded faces it is time we departed, but we will depart as we came in the sun. If this day bring no more fruit than its fellows, neither victory to a lord nor sovereignty to his lady, we will to-morrow hold the mightiest tourney of the year, and he who wins the crown shall give it to his love, and she shall be called for ever the fairest of Sussex; but for that, if her lord desire it, she shall wed him—yes, though it be myself she shall!"
And at this the hearts of nine men in ten leapt in their breasts for longing of her, and in the tenth for longing of Linoret or Clarimond or Damarel or Amelys; and all went to the chase thinking as much of the morrow as of the day.
It was the day when the forests burned their brightest. The earth was fuller of color than in the painted spring; the hedgerows were hung with brilliant berries in wreaths and clusters, luminous briony and honeysuckle, and the ebony gloss of the privet making more vivid the bright red of the hips and the dark red of the haws. The smooth flat meadows and smooth round sides of the Downs were not greener in June; nor in that crystal air did the river ever run bluer than under that blue sky. The elms were getting already their dusky gold and the beeches their brighter reds and golds and coppers; where they were young and in thin leaf the sun-flood watered them to transparent pinks and lemons, as bright, though not as burning, as the massed colors of the older trees. That day there was magic on the western hills, for those who could see it, and trees that were not trees.
So Rosalind who, like all the world, was early abroad, though not with all the world, saw a silver cloud pretending to be white flowers upon a hawthorn; never in spring sunlight had the bush shone whiter. But when Maudlin rode by later she saw, not a cloud in flower, but a flowerless tree, dressed with the new-puffed whiteness of wild clematis, its silver-green tendrils shining through their own mist.
Then Rosalind saw a sunset pretending to be a spindle-tree, scattering flecks of red and yellow light upon the ground, till the grass threw up a reflection of the tree, as a cloud in the east will reflect another in the west. But when Maudlin came riding the spots of light upon the ground were little pointed leaves, and the sunset a little tree as round as a clipped yew, mottled like an artist's palette with every shade from primrose to orange and from rose to crimson.
And last, in a green glade under a steep hollow overhung with ash, Rosalind saw a fairy pretending to be a silver birch turned golden. For her leaves hung like the shaking water of a sunlit fountain, and she stood alone in the very middle of the glade as though on tip-toe for a dance; and all the green trees that had retreated from her dancing-floor seemed ready to break into music, so that Rosalind held her breath lest she should shatter the moment and the magic, and stayed spell-bound where she was. But an hour afterwards Maudlin, riding the chalky ledge on the ash-grown height, looked down on that same sight and uttered a sharp cry; for she saw, no fairy, but a little yellowing birch, and under it the snow-white hart with the Rusty Knight beside him. Then all the company with her echoed the cry, and the forest was filled with the round sounds of horns and belling hounds. And while in great excitement men sought a way down into the steep glen, the hart and his ragged guard had started up, and vanished through the underworld of trees.
The hue and cry was taken up. Not one or two, but fifty had now seen the quarry, and panted for the glory of the prize. And so, near the very beginning of the day, the chase began.
The scent was found and lost and found again. The stag swam the river twice, once at South Stoke, and once at Houghton Bridge, and the man swam with it; and then, keeping over the fields they ran up Coombe and went west and north, over Bignor Hill and Farm Hill, through the Kennels and Tegleaze. They were sighted on Lamb Lea and lost in Charlton. They were seen again on Heyshott and vanished in Herringdean Copse. They crossed the last high-road in Sussex and ran over Linch Down and Treyford nearly into Hampshire; and there the quarry turned and tried to double home by Winden Wood and Cotworth Down. The marvel was that the Rusty Knight was always with it, sometimes beside it, often on its back; and even when he bestrode it, it flew over the green hills like a white sail driven by a wind at sea, or a cloud flying the skies. When it doubled it had shaken off the greater part of the hunt. But through Wellhanger and over Levin some followed it still. In the woods of Malecomb only the seven knights who most loved Maudlin remained staunch; and they were spurred by hope, because when they now sighted it it seemed as though the hart began to tire, and its rider drooped. Their own steeds panted, and their dogs' tongues lolled; but over the dells and rises, woods and fields, they still pressed on, exulting that they of all the hunt remained to bring the weary gallant thing to bay.
Once more they were in the home country, and the day was drawing to a glorious close. In the great woods of Rewell the hart tried to confuse the scent and conceal itself with its spent comrade, but it was too late; for it too was nearly spent. Yet it plunged forward to the ridge of Arundel with its high fret of trees like harp-strings, filled with the music of the evening sky. And here again among the dipping valleys, the quarry sought to shake off the pursuit; but as vainly as before. In that exhausted close for hunters and hunted, the first had triumph to spur the last of their strength, and the second despair to eke out theirs. At Whiteways the hart struck down through a secret dip, into the loveliest hidden valley of all the Downs; and descending after it the knights saw suddenly before them a great curve of the steely river, lying under the sunset like a scimitar dyed with blood. And in a last desperate effort the hart swerved round a narrow footway by the river, and disappeared.
The knights followed shouting with their baying dogs, and the next instant were struck mute with astonishment. For the narrow wooded path by the water suddenly swung open into a towering semi-circle of dazzling cliffs, uprising like the loftiest castle upon earth: such castles as heaven builds of gigantic clouds, to scatter their solid piles with a wind again. But only the hurricanes of the first day or the last could bring this mighty pile to dissolution. The forefront of the vast theater was a perfect sward, lying above the water like a green half-moon; beyond and around it small hills and dells rose and fell in waves until they reached the brink of the great cliffs. At the further point of the semi-circle the narrow way by the river began again, and steep woods came down to the water cutting off the north.
And somewhere hidden in the hemisphere of little hills the hart was hidden, without a path of escape.
The men sprang from their horses, and followed the barking dogs across the sward. At the end of it they turned up a neck of grass that coiled about a hollow like the rim of a cup. It led to a little plateau ringed with bushes, and smelling sweet of thyme. At first it seemed as though there were no other ingress; but the dogs nosed on and pointed to an opening through the thick growth on the left, and disappeared with hoarse wild barks and yelps; and their masters made to follow.
But at the same instant they heard a voice come from the bushes, a voice well known to them; but now it was exhausted of its power, though not of its anger.
"This quarry and this place," it cried, "are sacred to the Proud Rosalind and in her name I warn you, trespassers, that you proceed at your peril!"
At this the seven knights burst into laughter, and one cried, "Why, then, it seems we have brought the lady to bay with the hart—a double quarry, friends. Come, for the dogs are full of music now, and we must see the kill."
As they moved forward an arrow sped far above their heads.
Then a second man cried, "We could shoot into the dark more surely than this clumsy marksman out of it. Let us shoot among the trees and give him his deserts. And after that let nothing hold us from the dogs, for their voices turn the blood in me to fire."
So each man plucked an arrow from his quiver.
And as he fitted it, lo! with incredible swiftness seven arrows shot through the air, and one by one each arrow split in two a knight's yew-bow. The men looked at their broken bows amazed. And as they looked at each other the dogs stopped baying, one by one.
One of the knights said, breathing heavily, "This must be seen to. The man who could shoot like this has been playing with us since midsummer. Let us come in and call him to account, and make him show us his Proud Rosalind."
They made a single movement towards the opening; at the same moment there was a great movement behind it, and they came face to face with the hart-royal. It stood at bay, its terrible antlers lowered; its eyes were danger-lights, as red as rubies. And the seven weaponless men stood rooted there, and one said, "Where are the dogs?"
But they knew the dogs were dead.
So they turned and went out of that place, and found their horses and rode away.
And when they had gone the hart too turned again, and went slowly down a little slipping path through the bushes and came to the very inmost chamber of its castle, a round and roofless shrine, walled half by the bird-haunted cliffs and half by woods. Within on the grass lay the dead hounds, each pierced by an arrow; and on a bowlder near them sat the Rusty Knight, with drooping head and body, regarding them through the vizard he was too weary to raise. He was exhausted past bearing himself. The hart lay down beside him, as exhausted as he.
But a sound in the forest that thickly clothed the cliff made both look up. And down between the trees, almost from the height of the cliff, climbed Harding the Red Hunter, bow in hand. He strode across the little space that divided them still, and stood over the Rusty Knight and the white Hart-Royal. And both might have been petrified, for neither stirred.
After a little Harding began to speak. "Are you satisfied, Rusty Knight," said he, "with what you have done in Proud Rosalind's honor?"
The Rusty Knight did not answer.
"Did ever lady have a sorrier champion?" Harding laughed roughly. "She would have beggared herself to get you a sword. And she got you a sword the like of which no knight ever had before. And how have you used it? All through a summer you have brought laughter upon her. She would have beggared herself again to get you a bow that only a god was worthy to draw. And how have you drawn it? For a month you have drawn it to men's scorn of her and of you. You have cried her praises only to forfeit them. You have vaunted her beauty and never crowned it. And what have you got for it?" The Rusty Knight was as dumb as the dead. Harding stepped closer. "Shall I tell you, Rusty Knight, what you have got for it? Last Midsummer Eve by the Wishing-Well the Proud Rosalind forswore love if heaven would send her a man to strike a blow in her name for her fathers' sake. She did not say what sort of man or what sort of blow. She asked in her simplicity only that a blow should be struck. And like a woman she was ready to find it enough, and in gratitude repay it with that which could only in honor be exchanged for what honored her. Yet I myself heard her swear to hold herself bound to the sorry champion who should strike for her in the tourney. And you struck and fell. Did you tell her you fell when you came to her, crownless? And how did she crown you for your fall, Rusty Knight?"
The Knight sprang to his feet and stood quivering.
"That moves you," said Harding, "but I will move you more. The Proud Rosalind is not your woman. She is mine. She was mine from the moment her eyes fell. She was only a child then, but I knew she was mine as surely as I knew this hart was mine and no other's, when first I saw it as a calf drink at its pool. But I was patient and waited till he, my calf, should become a king, and she, my heifer, a queen. And I am her man because I am of king's stock in my own land, and she of king's stock in hers. And I am her man because for a year I have kept her, without her knowledge, with the pence I earned by my sweat, that were earned for a different purpose. And I am her man because the hart you have defended so ill, and hampered for a month, was saved to-day by my arrows, not yours. It was my arrows slew the hounds from the top of the cliff. It was my arrows split the bows of the seven knights. And it is my arrow now that will kill the White Hart that in all men's sight I may give her the antlers to-morrow, and hear my Proud Rosalind called queen among women."
And as he spoke Harding drew back suddenly, and fitted a shaft to his string as though he would shoot the hart where it lay.
But the Rusty Knight sprang forward and caught his hands crying, "Not my Hart! you shall not shoot my Hart!" And he tore off his casque, and the great tawny mantle of Rosalind's hair fell over her rags, and her face was on fire and her bosom heaving; and she sank down murmuring, "I beg you to spare my Hart."
But Harding, uttering a great laugh of pride and joy, caught her up before she could kneel, saying, "Not even to me, my Proud Rosalind!" And without even kissing her lips, he put her from him and knelt before her, and kissed her feet.
("Will you be so good, Mistress Jane," said Martin, "as to sew on my button?"
"I will not knot my thread, Master Pippin," said Jane, "till you have snapped yours."
"It is snapped," said Martin. "The story is done."
Joscelyn: It is too much! it is TOO much! You do it on purpose!
Martin: Oh, Mistress Joscelyn! I never do anything on purpose. And therefore I am always doing either too much or too little. But in what have I exceeded? My story? I am sorry if it is too long.
Joscelyn: It was too short—and you are quibbling.
Martin: I?—But never mind. What more can I say? It is a fault, I know; but as soon as my lovers understand each other I can see no further.
Joscelyn: There are a thousand things more you can say. Who this Harding was, for one.
Joyce: And what he meant by saying his pennies had kept her, for another.
Jennifer: And for what other purpose he had intended them.
Jessica: And you must describe all that happened at the last tourney.
Jane: And what about the ring and the girdle and the circlet and the silver gown?
"I would so like to know," said little Joan, "if Harding and Rosalind lived happily ever after. Please won't you tell us how it all ended?"
"Will women NEVER see what lies under their noses?" groaned Martin. "Will they ALWAYS stare over a wall, and if they're not tall enough to try to stare through it? Will they ONLY know that a thing has come to its end when they see it making a new beginning? Why, after the first kiss all tales start afresh, though they start on the second, which is as different from the first as a garden rose from a wild one. Here have I galloped you to a conclusion, and now you would set me ambling again."
"Then make up your mind to it," said Joscelyn, "and amble."
"Dear heaven!" went on Martin, "I begin to believe that when a woman is being kissed she doesn't even notice it for thinking, How sweet it will be when he kisses me next Tuesday fortnight!"
"Then get on to Tuesday fortnight," scolded Joscelyn, "if that be the end."
"The end indeed!" said Martin. "On Tuesday fortnight, at the very instant, the slippery creature is thinking, How delicious it was when he kissed me two weeks ago last Saturday! There's no end with a woman, either backwards or forwards!"
"For goodness' sake," cried Joscelyn, "stop grumbling and get on with it!"
"There's no end to a man's grumbling either," said Martin; "but I'll get on with it.")
The tale that Harding had to tell Proud Rosalind was a long one, but I will make as short of it as I can. He told her how in his own country he was sprung of the race of Volundr, who was a God and a King and a Smith all in one; but he had been ill-used and banished, and had since haunted England where men knew him as Wayland, and he did miracles. But in his own northern land his strain continued, until Harding's father, a king himself, was like his ancestor defeated and banished, and crossed the water with his young son and a chest of relics of Old Wayland's work—a ring, a girdle, a crown, and a silver robe; a sword and bow which Rosalind knew already; and other things as well. And the boy grew up filled with the ancient wrongs of his ancestor, and he went about the country seeking Wayland's haunts; and wherever he found them he found a mossy legend, neglected and unproved, of how the god worked, or had worked, for any man's pence, and put his divine craft to laborers' service. And as in Rosalind the dream had grown of building up her fathers' honor again, so Harding had from boyhood nursed his dream of establishing that of the half-forgotten god. And he, who had inherited his ancestor's craft in metal, coming at last through Sussex settled at Bury, where the legend lay on its sick-bed; and he set up his shop by the ferry so that he might doctor it. And there he did his work in two ways; for as the Red Smith he did such work as might be done better by a hundred men, but as Wayland he did what could only have been done better by the god. And the toll he collected for that work he saved, year-in-year-out, till he should have enough to build the god a shrine. And, leaving this visible evidence behind him, he meant to depart to his own land, and let the faith in Wayland wax of itself. And then Harding told Rosalind how he had first seen the hart when it was a calf six years before at midsummer, and how it had led him to the Wishing-Well; and he had marked it for his own. And how in the same year he had first noticed Rosalind, a girl not yet sixteen, and, for the fire of kings in her that all her poverty could not extinguish, chosen her for his mate.
"And year by year," said Harding, "I watched to see whether the direst want could bring you to humbleness, and saw you only grow in nobleness; and year by year I lay in wait for my four-footed quarry each Midsummer Eve beside the Wishing-Pool, and saw it grow in kingliness. And last year, as you know, I saw you come to the Pool beside the hart, and heard you make your high prayer for life or death. And if I had not been able to give you the life, I would have given you the death you prayed for. But I went before you, and going by the ferry put my old god's money in your room before you could be there. And from time to time I robbed his store to keep you. But when in spring they drove you from the castle I did not know where to find you; and I hunted for your lair as I hunted for the hart's, and never knew they were the same. Then this year came the wishing-time again, and lying hidden I heard you cry for a man to strike for you. And I was tempted then to reveal myself and make you know to what man you were committed. But I decided that I would wait and strike for you in the tourney, and come to you for the first time with a crown. And so I went back to the ferry and set to work; and to my amazement you followed me, and for the first time of your own will addressed me. I wondered whether you had come to be humble before your time, and if you had been I would have let you go for ever; but when you spoke with scorn as to a servant who had once forgotten himself so far as to play the man to you, I laughed in my heart and prized your scorn more dearly than your favor; and said to myself, To-morrow she shall know me for her man. But when you went down to the water and made your demand of Wayland, for his sake and yours I was ready to give you a weapon worthy of your steel. So I gave you the god's own sword and waited to see what use you would make of it. And you made as ill an use as after you made of the god's bow. And while men spoke betwixt wrath and mockery of the Rusty Knight, I loved more dearly that champion who was doing so ill so bravely for a championless lady." Then Harding looked her steadily in the eyes, and though her face was all on fire again as he alone had power to make it, she did not flinch from his gaze, and he took her hand and said, "No man has ever struck a blow for you yet, Proud Rosalind, but the Rusty Knight will strike for you to-morrow; and as to-day there was no marksman, so to-morrow there shall be no swordsman who can match him. And when he has won the crown of Sussex for you, you shall redeem your pledge of the Wishing-Well and give him what he will. Till then, be free." And he dropped her hand again and let her go.
She turned and went quickly into the bushes and soon she came out bearing the miserable arms of the Rusty Knight and the glorious sword.
"These are all that were in my fathers' castle for many years," she said, "and I took them when I went away and the white hart brought me to his own castle. But though these are big for me, they will be small for you."
And Harding looked at them and laughed his short laugh. "The casque alone will serve," he said. "By that and the sword men shall know me. I have my own arms else; and I will take on myself the shame of this ludicrous casque, and redeem it in your name. And you shall have these in exchange." And he handed her his pouch and bade her what to do in the morning, and went away. He still had not kissed her mouth, nor had she offered it.
Now there is very little left to tell. On the morrow, when the roll of knights had been called, all eyes instinctively turned to the great gateway, by which the Rusty Knight had always come at the last moment. And as they looked they saw whom they expected, but not what they expected. For though his head was hidden in the rusty casque, and though he held the sword which all men covet, he was clad from neck to foot in arms and mail so marvelously chased and inwrought with red gold that his whole body shone ruddy in the sunshaft. And men and women, dazzled and confused, wondered what trick of light made him appear more tall and broad than they remembered him; so that he seemed to dwarf all other men. The murmur and the doubt went round, "Is it the Rusty Knight?"
Then in a voice of thunder he replied, "Ay, if you will, it is the Rusty Knight; or the Red Knight, or the Knight of the Royal Heart, or of the Hart-Royal; but by any name, the knight of the Proud Rosalind, who is the proudest and most peerless of all the maids of Sussex, as this day's work shall prove."
And none laughed.
The joust began; and before the Rusty Knight the rest went down like corn beaten by hail. And all men marveled at him, and all women likewise. And the young Queen Maudlin of Bramber, a prey to her whims, loved him as long as the tourney lasted. And when it was ended, and he alone stood upright, she rose in her seat and held out to him the crown of gold and flowers upon a silken pillow, crying, "You have won this, you unknown, unseen champion, and it is your right to give it where you will; and none will dispute her supremacy in beauty for ever." And as he strode and knelt to receive the crown she added quickly, "And I know not whether the promise has reached your ears which yesterday was made—that she who accepts the crown is to wed the victor, although he choose the Queen herself to wear it."
And she smiled down at him like morning smiling out of the sky; and her beauty was such as to make a man forget all other beauty and all resolutions. But Harding took the crown from her and touched her hand with the rusty brow of his casque and said, "A Queen will wear it, for my lady's fathers were once Kings of Amberley."
Then Maudlin stamped her foot as a butterfly might, and cried, "Where is this lady whom you keep as hidden as your face?"
And Harding rose and turned towards the gateway, and all turned with him; and into the arch rode Rosalind on the white hart. And she was clothed from her neck to the soles of her naked feet in a sheath of silver that seemed molded to her lovely body; and about her waist a golden girdle hung, set with green stones, and from her finger a great emerald shot green fire, and on her head a golden fillet lay in the likeness of close-set leaves with clusters of gleaming green berries that were other emeralds; and under it her glory of hair fell like liquid metal down her back and over the hart's neck, as low as her silver hem. And the hart with its splendid antlers stood motionless and proud as though it knew it carried a young Queen. But indeed men wondered whether it were not a young goddess. And so for a very few moments this carven vision of gold and silver and ivory and molten bronze and copper and green jewels stood in their gaze. And then Harding bore the crown to her and knelt, and stood up again and crowned her before them all; and laying his hand upon the white hart's neck, moved away with it and its beautiful rider through the gateway. And no one moved or spoke or tried to stop them. But by the footway over the water-meadows they went, and at the river's edge found Harding's broad flat boat with the bird's beak. And Harding said, "Will you come over the ferry with me, Proud Rosalind?"
And Rosalind answered, "What is your fee, Red Boatman?"
Then Harding answered, "For that which flows I take only that which flows."
And Rosalind, stooping of her own accord from the white hart's back, kissed him.
I shall be very uncomfortable, Mistress Jane, till you have sewed on my button.
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