Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (421 page)

“Ah, gentle friend,” the Lady Dionissia said, “your plan is much the better, and in all things you are discreet and most wise. So it is more well with me that I can utter.”

She put her distaff down beside her in the rushes, and with both her hands drew up his face that lay in her lap. And for long she kissed him on the mouth, and so afterwards sat with her cheek upon his forehead, gazing at the fire and thinking upon the journeys that they would make. Her dress was all of green cloth, being very long, and the long sleeves sewn with yellow silk, and her hennin was very broad and white, for she loved this fashion of head-dress better than any other, though new fashions were constantly arising. And the Knight of Winterburne was all in brown cloth with a great hood cast back. And his shoes of brown leather were very long, but were not tied up to the knee, for in such shoes you cannot ride. So they sat in the firelight and devised of the summer days that lay before them.

Upon the valley track in the starlight a man came riding furiously upon a light horse in the fashion of a hackney. It was all dark where he rode, and there was danger from the roughness of the way, but he cared nothing because of the black rage that was in his heart.

For that day, in the city of Salisbury, his leman had left him. She had gone away with a richer man who had seen her at a window and had promised her many dresses and a painted bower of her own in the town of London. But who this was he did not know, nor could he find any trace of where they had gone. And so he had ridden very fast to the castle of Stapleford, leaving all his men masterless and forlorn in the city.

Being come to Stapleford, he learnt the news from his cousin the Lady Blanche, lying abed with her leg broken, raging and cursing God. And from her he learnt that all the evil that had fallen upon them came from this stranger who had come with the magic cross and from his half-wife, the Lady Dionissia, who was a very evil witch from the marches of Wales. And it was these two without doubt who had spirited away his leman Gertrude. The Lady Blanche whispered these things into his ears until he was frenzied, bidding him revenge himself. His cousin of Coucy would have given him better counsel, but that knight was down by the riverside seeing how his men folded up his pavilions and took down the lists, for here was much wood cut that would make good firing in the oncoming winter. So the Young Knight had ridden furiously, having drunk much wine and mead, through all these men at the riverside, paying no heed to them, neither could anyone overtake him, for his horse was very fast and enduring, being an Arab that his brother the Old Knight, now dead, had brought from the Holy Land. It was dusk when he passed his great castle of Tamworth, and night fell dark whilst he climbed the great hill behind the town of Wiley.

And all the while as his horse scrambled up the hill or galloped down valleys there ran in his muddled and agonised mind two only thoughts: the one that he would force these bitter sorcerers to conjure his Gertrude back as they had conjured her away; or else he would seize the cross which gave that wizard his power, and so he himself would force her to come back. So he thought over and over again as he rode through the night, and his bitter tears fell down because his leman had left him. And he was fully convinced that this had been done by sorcery, so often had the Lady Blanche, lying in her bed, declared this to be the case.

So at last in the black night he perceived the torches of people going about on the hillside like moving stars and the lights of the little castle showed black against the sky. With no thought of the danger that he ran, entering alone and unarmed, he rode in over the drawbridge that was down and threw himself, beneath the archway, from his horse. The horse ran on into the courtyard, and he pushed open with violence a door that was upon his right-hand side. He staggered into a large hall, and at first he could not see because of the bright light. Then there screamed out the Lady Amoureuse, and ran past him through the archway and into another door. So he turned and followed her. He came into this room covered with sweat and mud and with his eyes staring. The Lady Dionissia was rising from her stool, the Lady Amoureuse was crouching back against the wall at the far end of the room with her eyes very large and full of fear. The new Knight of Winterburne was sitting on the rushes and looking back over his shoulder. Towards him the Young Knight ran, and cried out in a lamentable manner:

“Give me back my leman. Give me back that I love.”

The new knight turned him slowly round in the rushes.

“Ah, gentle knight,” he said, “what is this?”

“Give her back to me! Give her back!” the Young Knight cried out.

The Lady Dionissia went quickly into her bower to fetch from it some weapon, for all her harness had been put in her closet. But because it was dark in that room she could not well find the latch of the door of her closet, so she lost some time.

The new knight was drawing in his legs to rise from the rushes, and before him the Young Knight exclaimed perpetually:

“Give me back my leman that you have taken.”

And then suddenly he changed his cry, and said:

“Give me the cross that I see at your throat.”

The new knight covered the cross with his hand. He was upon one knee now, and had the other foot upon the rushes ready to stand up.

“Nay, gentle knight,” he said, “I do not know if I should give you this cross or no. For it was given me in trust by a lady the wife of an Egerton of Tamworth. That is true, and if you had a wife I would give it to her. But I think your only wife is Lady Dionissia, and yet it is not right for me to give this cross to her, for that would make it soon my own, and I think I have no right to it, but am only its guardian.”

“Thou fool!” the Young Knight screamed out, “the only wife I have is this Gertrude, for I married before a hedge priest in Derby. I thought, fool that I was, that this would tie her to me.”

And suddenly he began to sob and cry and hit his chest with his immense and knotted right hand. But his news had been so astounding that the new knight was struck perfectly still where he was, with one leg bent and the other stretched out behind him as he was rising from the floor. He could find no words to speak, for in his astonishment he had no thoughts to utter. Then a new and violent gust of rage came over the Young Knight, and without more words he sprang at the throat of the Knight of Winterburne to wrench from it the golden cross that he coveted. He fell upon the new knight with an enormous force, for he was considered to be the strongest man, whether in Christendom or in Heathenesse, of that day. But because the new knight was only half risen to his feet, so before this shock he overbalanced backwards and fell his full length. His head struck the stone of the wall and came forward upon his chest, and he lay stone still with his eyes shut. Then the Young Knight sprang down upon his hands and knees at the throat of the Knight of Winterburne to have the cross. But so firmly was the head of this body pressed down upon the chest that he could not come to the chain of the cross because it was under the chin. So he began to wrestle this body away from the wall. The Lady Amoureuse screamed:

“Ha, murder!”

She ran across the room and over the Young Knights back set both her hands round his soft throat. And so great was the strength that God and love gave her that moment, that when she pulled the Young Knight off the dead man’s body he staggered half across the room, turning round as he went. And there against him stood the Lady Dionissia coming out of the doorway of her room, the long dagger in her hand. Her eyes were enormously large and stared hardly, like two blue stones; her mouth was stretched tight open as if she desired to scream but could not. The Young Knight stared at her stupidly, for he did not know who she was.

She raised the dagger and drove it through his throat with such force that it stuck in the bones of his throat behind, so that she could not draw it out again.

Then he clasped his hands over his eyes and spun round upon one leg, the other being drawn up in agony. Cry out he could not, for the dagger was through his throttle. Then a great fountain of blood poured from his throat, his mouth and nose, and so he fell down and died as the blood ran from him.

L’ENVOI

CHAPTER I.

IT was very great pain; it was pain unbearable shed over all his limbs — such pain as makes one cry out that no Destiny has the right to inflict it. Voices spoke, in his great darkness, as if from outside it: arrogant and distant voices. Then his eyes saw — a bare white room: so much light that it hurt;-bare white walls; a bare white ceiling and an overpowering, hateful odour. He struggled with his hands; his own voice said:

“Let me go back! Ah, God, let me go back!” His eyes filled with tears.

A woman stood looking at him from the foot of his white bed — a woman with an impasssive face and pursed lips. Her hands were folded before her. It seemed to him as if she must be in power over him. His eyes rolled in agony; his lips wavered.

“Par pitié et amours de Die!” he said. “Let me go back.”

She looked at him impassively for a moment. She was in a blue print dress that was almost covered by a white apron with great pockets. Suddenly she parted her hands to put one of them into one of these pockets. She drew out, with a deliberate action, a small cylinder. She turned and walked to the wall. Upon it there was nailed a square of paper; it was divided by rectangular lines, and across it ran another more black, zigzagging up and down. She surveyed this for some moments, holding the pencil-case to her lips.

A man looked out of a sort of cupboard. He had on a white linen coat that covered him from his chin to his feet. He looked at Mr. Sorrell: he had a hard, keen expression, and he was pulling off his hands very thin, brown, viscous gloves that stuck gummily to his skin. These seemed to Mr. Sorrell to be disgusting — like an obscene insult. The man nodded to the woman, who was looking at him over her shoulder. She had on a white linen cap, folded like a coif that hid all her hair. The man went into the cupboard again, sideways, withdrawing his head last of all.

The woman continued to look at the paper with the squares and the zigzag. She raised to it slowly the hand holding the silver pencil. She made a round mark at the end of the zigzag line. Then he heard his own voice say distinctly:

“Temperature chart!”

There was a sound from his left side, near his shoulder, the slight ejaculation of a woman’s voice. He moved his head. There beside him was another woman; she was all in black; her face was pallid and lined; in her dark hair was a great strand of grey. Over her shoulder there looked the face of a boy of twenty — abashed, curious, very fair, with friendly, honest eyes, but a weak mouth. The woman’s eyes were very large and dark; at one time they must have been very beautiful. They filled slowly with great tears that overflowed their lids, ran down her cheeks, and dropped on to her black dress. They looked down on him as if in an agony; her hands clasped themselves together upon her chest. He gazed at her wonderingly, like a child. The boy looked into his eyes, wonderingly too, over his mother’s shoulder. Then Mr. Sorrell said:

“Mrs. Lee-Egerton!”

His hand fumbled with a thin metal plate that lay on the coverlet beneath his fingers. He knew he had been clutching it tightly for a very long time. His hand was so weak that he could not lift it, but he moved it slightly across the bed towards her.

“This is yours,” he said; “I’ve kept it faithfully,” and his fingers opened themselves.

She cried:

“Oh, thank God! you have come back. I have so prayed!”

The young man stepped in front of his mother.

“Sir William Sorrell,” he said, “I want at the very first moment to thank—”

The nurse had come quickly over between mother and son and the patient; she said: “Hush! Hush! Not now,” and with whispers drove them, as if she had been a sheep dog, from the room.

“So they have knighted me,” he said. “I thought they would.” And he added with a bitter contempt: “Knighted! For publishing encyclopaedias!”

The nurse said:

“Hush! Hush!” and going towards the windows she excluded most of the light — with curtains or shutters, he could not see which. “You must not talk, you must sleep,” she said.

She came close to his head, and feeling in her apron pocket took out another silver thing. She opened it and held in her fingers a little tube of glass. She approached it to Mr. Sorrell’s lips.

“What is the good of it all?” he said. —

She placed the thermometer between his lips. His teeth closed upon it, and he lay staring into the dusk and thinking. Then she took the thermometer to the crack of light in the nearer of the two windows, “Wasn’t there another?” he asked—”another nurse?”

She looked towards him through the twilight.

“Yes,” she answered, “there was another one before me. She broke down. But you ought to thank her — her and the doctor.” And then she added: “And God, of course,” perfunctorily.

“Ah, but I don’t thank them,” he answered. “I want to go back. It’s as if there were a curtain. I want it drawn. It must be drawn away!” His hands struggled feebly on the counterpane, and because he was very weak he began to sob pitifully.

The nurse went quickly towards the door of the washing cupboard.

“Doctor,” she said, “he had better have the draught at once. He won’t rest till then.”