He had to talk, and as the girl gave him no help, Prosper found
himself asking questions and puzzling out the answers he got, trying
to make them fit with the facts. He was amazed that one so delicately
formed should go barefooted and bareheaded, clad in torn rags. To all
his questions she replied in a voice low and tremulous, and very
simply--that is to say, to such of them as she would answer at all. To
many--to all which touched upon Galors and his business with her in
the quarry--she was as dumb as a fish. Prosper was as patient as you
could expect.
He asked her who she was, and how called. She told him--"I am Matt-of-
the-Moors child, and men call me Isoult la Desirous."
"That is a strange name," said he. "How came you by such a name as
that?"
"Sir," said Isoult, "I have never had any other; and I suppose that I
have it because I am unhappy, and not at peace with those who seek
me."
"Who seeks you, Isoult?"
To that she gave no reply. So Prosper went on.
"If many sought you, child," he said, "you were rightly called Isoult
la Desirée, but if you, on the other hand, sought something or
somebody, then you were Isoult la Desirous. Is it not so?"
"My lord," said Isoult, "the last is my name."
"Then it must be that you too seek something. What is it that you seek,
that all the tithing knows of it?"
But she hung her head and had nothing to say. He went on to speak of
Galors, to her visible disease. When he asked what the monk wanted
with her, he felt her tremble on his arm. She began to cry, suddenly
turned her face into his shoulder, and kept it there while her sobs
shook through her.
"Well, child," said he, "dry your tears, and turn your face to such
light as there is, being well assured of this, that whatever he asked
of you he did not get, and that he will ask no more."
"I fear him, I fear him," she said very low--and again, "I fear him, I
fear him."
"Drat the monk," said Prosper, laughing, "is he to cut me out of a
compliment?"
Whereupon she turned a very woebegone and tearful face up to his. He
looked smilingly down; a sudden wave of half-humbrous pity for a thing
so frail and amazed swam about him; before he knew he had kissed her
cheek. This set her blushing a little; but she seemed to take heart,
smiled rather pitifully, and turned again with a sigh, like a baby's
for sleep.
The night gathered apace with a chill wind; some fine rain began to
fall, then heavy drops. Gradually the wind increased, and the rain
with it. "Now we shall have it," said Prosper, sniffing for the storm.
He covered Isoult with his cloak, folded it about her as best he
could, and tucked it in; she lay in his arms snug enough, and slept
while he urged his horse over the stubbed heath. The water hissed and
ran over the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and
scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock
deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober
trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and
the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or
late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to
do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered
abbey," he thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered has
too many. In the first case, therefore, Holy Thorn would leave her at
the gate, and in the second, that is where I myself would let her
stay. So it seems that she must needs have a wet skin." He felt
carefully about the sleeping child; the cloak kept her dry and warm as
a toast. She was sound asleep. "Good Lord!" cried Prosper, "it's a
pity to disturb this baby of mine. Saracen and I had better souse.
Moreover, I make no nearer, by all that appears, to river Wan or Holy
Thorn. Come up, horse; keep us moving."