Afterwards he was glad enough to remember this.
LADY’S LOVE
For, notwithstanding all that Isoult could urge (which
was very little indeed), Prosper started next morning
with a dozen men to scour the district for Maulfry.
He refused point blank to take the girl with him,
and after her rebuke and abasement of the night before,
still more after the reconciliation on knees, she
dared not plead overmuch. He was a man and a
great lord; she could not suppose that she knew all
his designs—any of them, if it came to that.
He must go his way— which was man’s
way—and she must stop at High March nursing
her heart—which was woman’s way—even
if High March proved a second Gracedieu and Isabel
a more inexorable Maulfry. No act of her own,
she resolved, should henceforward lead her to disobey
him. Ah! she remembered with a hot flush of pain—ah!
her disobedience at Gracedieu had brought all the
mischief, Vincent’s death all the anguish.
Of course it had not; of course Maulfry had tricked
her; but she was not the girl to spare herself reproaches.
Her loyalty to Prosper took her easily the length
of stultification.
So Prosper went; and it may be some consolation to
reflect that his going pleased fourteen people at
least. First it pleased the men he took with
him; for Prosper, that born fighter, was never so humorous
as when at long odds with death. Fighting seemed
a frolic with him for captain; a frolic, at that,
where the only danger was that in being killed outright
you would lose a taste of the certain win for your
side. For among the High March men there was already
a tradition—God knows how these things
grow—that Prosper le Gai and the hooded
hawk could not be beaten. He was so cheerful,
victory so light a thing. Then his cry—Bide
the time—could anything be more heartening?
Rung out in his shrill tones over the open field, during
a night attack, say, or called down the darkening
alleys of the forest, when the skirmishers were out
of each other’s sight and every man faced a
dim circle of possible hidden foes? Pest! it tied
man to man, front to rear. It tied the whole
troop to the brain of a young demon, who was never
so cool as when the swords were flying, and most wary
when seeming mad. Blood was a drink, death your
toast, at such a banquet. And that accounts for
twelve out of fourteen.
The thirteenth was Countess of Hauterive, Chatelaine
of High March, Lady of Morgraunt, etc. A
very few days inhabitancy where Master Roy was of
the party, had assured this lady that the page must
be ridded. She wished him no ill: you do
not wish ill to the earwig which you brush out of
the window. Certainly if a boy had needs be stabbed
by an Egyptian (who incontinent disappears and must
be hunted) it were simpler Roy had fallen than the
other. But she had no thought of amending the
mistakes of Providence. Great ladies who are really
great do not go to work to have inconvenient lacqueys
stabbed. This at least was not the Countess of
Hauterive’s way. If Fulk de Breaute had
not been her lover as well as her husband, if he had
been (for instance) only her husband, she would have
despised Earl Roger fully as much for the affair on
Spurnt Heath. No. But she meant Roy to go,
and here was her chance.
