"Why, I dreamed of it last night," she said very solemnly.
"You dreamed of it, Alice?" he echoed. She was called, she had told
him, Alice of the Hermitage.
"Yes, yes. A white bird and two hen-harriers. Ah, and there was more.
You have not yet done all. You have not yet begun!" She was full of
the thing.
"By my faith, I have wrung the necks of the pair of them," said
Prosper. "I know not how they can expect more of me than that."
"Listen," said Alice of the Hermitage, "the bird will be again chased,
again wounded. Morgraunt is full of hawks. You will see her again. My
dream was very precise. You will see her again; but this time the
chase will be long, and achievement only at the peril of your own
honour. But it seems that you shall win in the end what you have
thought to have won already, and the wound in the breast will be
staunched."
"Hum," said Prosper. "Now you shall tell me what I ought to do, how I
ought to begin. For you know the saw--'The sooner begun, the sooner
done.'"
"Oh, sir,". cries she, "you shall ride forward in the name of God,
remembering your manhood and the vows you made when you took up your
arms." She blushed as she spoke, kindling with her thoughts.
"I will do that," said Prosper, kindled in his turn. And so he left
her, and travelled all day towards Malbank Saint Thorn. He lay at
night in the open wood, not far, as he judged, from Spurnt Heath, upon
whose westernmost border ran Wan; there, or near by, he looked to find
the Abbey.
He spent the night at least better than did Dom Galors, whose thoughts
turned equally to Spurnt Heath. That strenuous man had taken the
Abbot's counsel to bed with him, a restless partner. An inordinate
partner also it proved to be, not content to keep the monk awake.
Turning every traffic of his mind to its own advantage, it shook out
the bright pinions of adventure over the dim corridors of Holy Thorn,
and with every pulse of the ordering bell came a reiteration of its
urgency. All night long, through all the task work of the next
morning, the thought was with him--"By means of this woman I may be
free. Free!" he cried. "I may be set up on high through her. Lord of
this land and patron of Holy Thorn; a maker and unmaker of abbots to
whom now I must bow my knees. Is it nothing to be master of a lovely
wife? Ha, is it nothing to rule a broad fee? A small thing to have
abbots kiss my hands? Lord of the earth! is this not worth a broken
vow, which in any case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous,
if I desired you before when you went torn and shamefaced through the
mire, what shall I say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a
crown, Isoult la Desirée!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la
Desirée, la Moult-Desirée, and felt his head spinning.