In these delicate times of crisis Isoult found an advocate, a
recorder, if you will be ruled by me. It was none too soon, for the
brother and sister of High March had reached that pretty stage of
intimacy when long silences are an embarrassment, and embarrassments
compact equally of pleasure and pain. As far as the lady was concerned
the pleasure predominated; the pain was reduced to sweet confusion,
the air made tremulous with promise. I do not say that for Prosper the
relationship did more than put him at his ease--but that is a good
deal. Say the Countess was a fire and High March an armchair. Prosper
had settled himself to stretch his legs and drowse. Poor Isoult was
the wailing wind in the chimney--a sound which could but add to his
comfortable well-being. It needs more than a whimper to tempt a man to
be cold in your company. The recorder was timely.
Prosper and his Countess were hawking in the fields beyond the forest,
and the sport had been bad. They had, in fact, their birds jessed and
hooded and were turning for home, when Prosper saw some fields away a
white bird--gull he thought--flying low. He sprang his tercel-gentle;
the same moment the Countess saw the quarry and flew hers. Both hawks
found at first cast; the white bird flew towards the falconers,
circling the field in which they stood, with its enemies glancing
about it. It gradually closed in, circling still round them and round,
till at last it was so near and so low as almost to be in reach of
Prosper's hand. He saw that it was not a gull, but a pigeon, and
started on a reminiscence. Just then one of the towering falcons
stooped and engaged. There was a wild scurry of wings; then the other
bird dropt. The Countess cheered the hawks: Prosper saw only the white
bird with a wound in her breast. Then as the quarry began to scream he
remembered everything, and to the dismay of the lady leapt off his
horse, ran to the struggling birds, and cuffed them off with all his
might. He succeeded. The wounded bird fluttered, half flying, half
hopping, across the grass, finally rose painfully into the air and
soared out of sight. Meantime Prosper, breathless and red in the face,
had hooded and bound the hawks. He brought hers back to the Countess
without a word.
"My dear Prosper," said she, "you will forgive me for asking if you
are mad?"
"I must seem so," he replied. "But I suppose every one has his tender
part which some shaft will reach. Mine is reached when two hawks wound
a white bird in the crop."
He spoke shortly, and still breathed faster than his wont. The
Countess was piqued.