CHAPTER XXI
A stout and ungainly being appeared round a thicket of bay trees, like some stout god Pan footing it in Arcady. It was the figure of a little man with a toad-like face, protruding blue eyes, and a great slit of a mouth. A double chin flapped to and fro under his ugly but good-tempered countenance, and his legs were bowed like the staves of a cask.
Pandart, good soul, was a mild man, a man of milk, who feared the Bishop and Ogier his knight. Slow of wit, he took life calmly, and was amazed at nothing so long as he had food. He stopped short when he saw Tristan standing by the White Heretic of the Seven Streams, and blinked his eyes under their penthouses of fat.
The salutation that was accorded him hardly tallied with the good man’s temper. Waddling over the grass like a fat and amiable dog, he was taken of a sudden by the throat and hurled flat upon his back. A whirlwind seemed to fill the place. Above him lowered a pale, set face, while a sword’s point rested over his heart.
Pandart, shrewdly scared and beaten for breath, lay and blinked at the man who held the sword. His shoulder had been disjointed in the fall, his arm lying twisted under his body; yet, despite the pain of it, he dared not stir, seeing that the bare steel weighed on his ribs. The silver circlet was thrust into his face. Pandart’s eyes seemed bewitched by the thing, while Tristan watched him as a dog watches a dog.
Slowly he forced the truth from the man concerning Columbe, whom he had sought from over the sea. Under the point of Tristan’s sword, Pandart told what had passed in the hermitage, Columbe’s coming and her shaming there, and, last, how she had died by Ogier’s hand, to make way for Rosamunde of the Seven Streams. It was a grim tale for a brother’s ears, but Tristan heard it to the end.
Then it was that Rosamunde, who watched him, saw his face become as the face of a devil. He reared up his sword over Pandart’s carcass, heeding not his whimpering nor his outstretched hand. Rosamunde, waking as from a dream, sprang forward and seized on Tristan’s arm.
“Slay him not,” she said. “Shall the man suffer for the master’s sin?”
Tristan flashed round on her.
“Betwixt them they have slain my sister,” he cried. “Am I a woman to snivel and forgive?”
Without flinching, she met the anger in his eyes, keeping her hold upon his powerful arm.
“Has not Ogier perished at your hand?”
“God did deliver him——”
“Not against this old man can you lift your sword.”
Pandart had slipped aside from under Tristan’s feet. He struggled to his knees and knelt there in the grass, his right arm hanging helpless from the shoulder. Tristan, looking at the grey head and the wrinkled face, relented somewhat, remembering his own sire.
“You shall judge,” he said to Rosamunde, giving her the sword.
She took it and set the point upon the grass.
“Speak with him yet further,” she said. “Have pity on his grey hairs, for the old man has been kind to me.”
She left them there together, while Pandart rose up from the grass and stood before Tristan, holding his maimed arm at the elbow. The anger was melting out of Tristan’s heart, and grief gathered in him as he thought of Columbe’s golden head lying tarnished under the sods.
“Show me the grave,” was all he said.
Pandart, wincing as he walked, led Tristan amid the flowers and fruit trees to where a great cedar stood, and a low green mound received the sunlight streaming through the boughs. Tall cypresses were crowded near, like mutes standing about a grave, while the great cedar’s vaulted gloom made the place solemn as a shrine.
When Tristan had looked long on the green mound in silence, he questioned Pandart further, and received the truth. Ogier had slain Columbe at the Bishop’s bidding, even to make room for Rosamunde, whom they had brought from Agravale. They had buried Columbe there under the light of the moon, with the red rose of death over her heart. Tristan said hardly a word, but suffered Pandart to pass back to the house, where his dame, a thin woman with a querulous face, cringed and waited for him behind the door. Pandart went in and bade her swathe his arm.
Meanwhile Rosamunde walked alone on the terrace-way where the oleanders bloomed in their stone jars. She was a strange woman, this Lady of the Seven Streams, devout yet passionate, gracious yet ever too enamoured of her pride. Perverse and incomprehensible, half shrew, half saint, beautiful even in her perversity, she was destined to pain those who gave her love. Jealous of her liberty, she would go shackled by a whim, provided the whim was of her own forging. Tristan she had believed dead these many months, and Tristan loved her. As a woman, she knew that well. Yet she had ordained it in her heart that Tristan’s love was mere summer madness, a boy’s love, beneath her pride.
Columbe his sister, then, was dead. Of the white-faced child from Purple Isle Rosamunde had had no knowledge. She had often gazed at the fresh-tufted mound under the cedar, but Pandart had kept silence and betrayed nothing. She felt a woman’s pity for this blue-eyed child reft from her home, bruised by the passions of a ruffian crew, done to death in this wild hermitage. The truth revealed to her her own real peril and the grim depths of Jocelyn’s perfidy.
Anon, she left the terrace and passed towards the cedar. Infinite thought dwelt in her large eyes, a beautiful wistfulness upon her mouth. Coming to the cypresses, she stood to listen. A sound, deep and significant, quickened the look of pity on her face. She stood open-mouthed, listening to the sound of a strong man weeping. There was an almost godly pathos in those tears. The truth thrilled Rosamunde to the core of her red heart, made her lips quiver, her eyes grow hot.
Tristan weeping! This great warm-hearted creature broken down by the touch of death! She listened with tingling ears, half ashamed of prying upon such sorrow, for the sound awed her utterly, dethroned the pride from out her soul. All the deep instincts of her womanhood awoke, tremulous and tender, poignant with another’s pain.
By sudden impulse she pushed past the cypresses, stood under the huge shadows of the cedar. Tristan was lying full length upon the grave, his face hidden within his arms. She saw his shoulders rise and fall, and he still had the silver circlet gripped in his right hand. Rosamunde stood impotent, hesitating to violate such grief as this.
Presently the man grew calmer, and the passion seemed to pass like a storm over the sea. Perhaps some spirit voice stilled the deep waters, the cry of the Christ to foaming Galilee. Rosamunde, moving over the grass, stooped, touched Tristan’s shoulder with her hand.
He twisted round like one smitten with a hot iron, and there was a shadow as of anger on his face. It was shame to a strong man such as Tristan to be caught with tears upon his cheeks. He rose up and knelt beside the grave, propping himself upon one arm. Rosamunde’s hand was still upon his shoulder; his other arm he held before his eyes.
“Madame,” he said sullenly, “must you stare upon my weakness thus?”
“Tristan——”
“Leave me.”
“Ah, may I not share your sorrow?”
She knelt down suddenly at his side, even like a mother, and drew the arm from before his face. He did not resist her, though he frowned a little.
“Tristan, you have been noble towards me in your faith,” she said; “may I not show a woman’s gratitude? Is there shame in receiving this?”
He looked in her eyes, but did not look for long, for there was still some bitterness within his heart. Was it not for Rosamunde that Columbe his sister had been done to death?
“Rosamunde,” he said, speaking slowly her name, “the wounded bear must lick his wounds and growl out his fury in some lonely den.”
“Ah,” she pleaded, “you grudge my gratitude to you for all.”
“Madame, I cannot parcel out my grief.”
“What of your vengeance—can I not share in that?”
It was a lash of the tongue suited to rouse such a man as Tristan. The speech was quick and swiftly sped. Tristan sprang from the grass like one who heard a faint voice calling from the grave.
“Vengeance—God hear me—yes!” he cried.
He stood there above Rosamunde and the grave, breathing heavily, the muscles showing in his powerful neck, his face transfigured for the moment. Taking the snake of silver, he wound it about his wrist, made a great vow with his hands uplifted to high Heaven.
“Never shall this poor relic leave this arm,” he said, “till it has hurled down Agravale into the dust.”