The Forest Lovers

Isoult, so soon as she had seen the last of old Ursula, turned her

face to the south and the sun. She walked a mile through bush and

bramble with picked-up skirts; then she sat down and took off her

scarlet shoes and stockings, threw them aside, and went on with a

lighter tread. Not that she was above the glory of silk robes and red

slippers, or unconscious that they heightened the charm of her person

--the old woman's glass, the old woman's face had told her better than

that. Indeed, if she could have believed she would meet with Prosper

at the end of that day, she would have borne with them, hindrance or

none. But this was not to be. Her hair was yet a good six inches from

her knees. So now, bare-legged and bare-footed, her skirts pulled back

and pinned behind her, she felt the glad tune of the woods singing in

her veins, and ran against the stream of cool air deeper into the

fountain-heart whence it flowed, the great silence and shade of the

forest. The path showed barer, the stems more sparse, the roof above

her denser. Soon there was no more grass, neither any moss; nothing

but mast and the leaves of many autumns. Keeping always down the

slope, and a little in advance of the sun, by mid-day she had run

clear of the beech forest into places where there grew hornbeams, with

one or two sapling oaks. There was tall bracken here, and dewy grass

again for her feet. She rested herself, sat deep in shade listening to

the murmur of bees in the sunlight and the gentle complaining of wood-

pigeons in the tree-tops far toward the blue. She lay down luxuriously

in the fern, pillowed her cheek on her folded hands, closed her eyes,

and let all the forest peace fan her to happy dreaming. It was

impossible to be ill at ease in such a harbour. The alien faces and

brawl of the town, the grime, the sweat, the blows of the charcoal-

burners, her secret life there in the midst of them, the shame, the

hooting and the stunning of her last day at distant High March,

Maulfry, Galors, leering Falve--all these grim apparitions sank back

into the green woodland vistas; all the shocks and alarums of her

timid little soul were subdued by the rustling boughs and the crooning

voices of the doves. She saw bright country in her dreams. Prosper was

abroad on a spurred horse; his helmet gleamed in the sun; his enemies

fell at his onset. The deer browsed about her, from the branches a

squirrel peeped down, the woodbirds with kindly peering eyes hopped

within reach of her cradled arms. Soon, soon, soon, she should see

him! She would be sitting at his knees; her cheek would be on his

breast, his arm hold her close, his kind eyes read all her love story.

What a reward for what a little aching! She fell asleep in the fern

and smiled at her own dreams. When she awoke two girls sat sentinel

beside her.