Yet never had Denise’s garden been a more intimate part of herself than that May morning with the wind tossing the beech boughs against a heavy sky. What a change from yesterday, what a breaking in of violent life, what revelations, what regret! The quiet days seemed behind her, far in the distance, for the vivid present had made even the near past seem unreal. As for her own heart, Denise was almost afraid to look therein. It was like her garden, with the barriers broken, and the life of yesterday trodden into the soil.
She had tried to put these passionate things from her, and to turn again to the life that she had known. There were a hundred things for her hands to do, but do them she could not, for the will in her seemed dead. Even the familiar trifles of her woodland hermitage were full of treachery and of suggestive guile. Her bed, Aymery had lain there. Her earthen pitcher, she had brought him water therein. The very stones of the path still seemed to show to her the stains of the man’s blood. Memories were everywhere, memories that would not vanish, and would not pale.
Denise’s face still burnt when she remembered Etoile’s laughter, that hard, metallic laughter like the clash of cymbals. The woman’s insolence showed her the mocking face of the world, yet for the life of her, Denise could not tear her thoughts from the happenings of those two days. Had the whole country risen to jeer at her, she could have suffered it because of the mystery that made of the ordeal a sacrifice. She had not saved the man, and yet she did not grudge all that she had borne, all that she still might bear. The violence of yesterday had opened the woman’s eyes in Denise. The world had a new strangeness, and the chant of the wind a more plaintive meaning.
She had been unable to sleep with thinking of Aymery, and of what had befallen him, for she still seemed to see his white, furious face, throwing its scorn into the scoffing mouths of the Gascon’s men. Nor could she forget the last look that had passed between them, the appeal in the man’s eyes as though he would have said to her: “God forgive me, for all this.” Where were they taking him, would they be rough with him, would he die of his wounds upon the road? What offence had he committed that his house should be burnt, and his life hazarded, and who was this Peter of Savoy, this Provençal that he should lord it over the men of the land, claiming to act for his over-lord the King? It was the right of the strong over the weak, the pride of the men who held the castles crushing those who refused to be exploited. The curse of a weak King was over the country. These hawks of his whom he had let loose in England obeyed no one, not even their own lord.
But Denise’s conscience took scourge in hand at last, and drove her from her broodings and her visions. Work, something to fill the mind, something tangible to fasten the hands upon! What did it avail her to loiter, to dream, and to conjecture? There was no salvation in mere feeling. Her heart was turning to wax in her, she who had worked for others, and who had been knelt to as a saint. A rush of shame smote her upon the bosom. The peasant women, these men of the fields, what would they think of her if they could read her thoughts? She had held up the Cross before their eyes, and was forgetting to look at it herself.
So Denise drove herself to work that morning, lifting the fallen fence and propping it with stakes, gathering the wreckage, binding up the broken life of the place. It eased her a little this labour under the grey sky, with the wind in the woods, and the smell of the soil. For in simple things the heart finds comfort, and idleness is no salve to the soul.
It was about noon when Dom Silvius came to the clearing in the beech wood, and Denise, who was binding up her trailing roses, saw figures moving amid the trees. Her brown eyes were alert instantly as the eyes of a deer. But there was nothing fierce about Dom Silvius’s figure, and nothing martial or masterful about the paces of his horse.
The almoner left the two servants under the woodshaw and rode forward slowly over the grass. Silvius’s eyes had a habit of seeing everything, even when they happened to express a vacant yet inspired preoccupation. He saw the scarred turf, the hoof marks everywhere, the broken fence about the garden, the woman in the grey cloak at work upon her roses.
Silvius kept a staid and thoughtful face till he had come close to the hermitage. Then his eyes beamed out suddenly as though he had only just discovered Denise behind the spring foliage of her roses. And Dom Silvius could put much sweetness into his smile so that his face shone like the face of a saint out of an Italian picture.
“Peace to you, Sister; we were nearer than I prophesied.”