CHAPTER XXXV. FACE-OF-GOD TALKETH WITH THE SUN-BEAM.
FACE-OF-GOD was at the Bridge on the morrow before sun-rising, and as heturned about at the Bridge-foot he saw the Sun-beam coming down thestreet; and his heart rose to his mouth at the sight of her, and he wentto meet her and took her by the hand; and there were no words betweenthem till they had kissed and caressed each other, for there was no onestirring about them. So they went over the Bridge into the meadows, andeastward of the beaten path thereover.
The grass was growing thick and strong, and it was full of flowers, asthe cowslip and the oxlip, and the chequered daffodil, and the wildtulip: the black-thorn was well-nigh done blooming, but the hawthorn wasin bud, and in some places growing white. It was a fair morning, warmand cloudless, but the night had been misty, and the haze still hungabout the meadows of the Dale where they were wettest, and the grass andits flowers were heavy with dew, so that the Sun-beam went barefoot inthe meadow. She had a dark cloak cast over her kirtle, and had left herglittering gown behind her in the House.
They went along hand in hand exceeding fain of each other, and the sunrose as they went, and the long beams of gold shone through the tops ofthe tall trees across the grass they trod, and a light wind rose up inthe north, as Face-of-god stayed a moment and turned toward the Face ofthe Sun and prayed to Him, while the Sun-beam’s hand left theWar-leader’s hand and stole up to his golden locks and lay amongst them.
Presently they went on, and the feet of Face-of-god led him unwittingtoward the chestnut grove by the old dyke where he had met the Bride sucha little while ago, till he bethought whither he was going and stoppedshort and reddened; and the Sun-beam noted it, but spake not; but hesaid: ‘Hereby is a fair place for us to sit and talk till the day’s workbeginneth.’
So then he turned aside, and soon they came to a hawthorn brake out ofwhich arose a great tall-stemmed oak, showing no green as yet save alittle on its lower twigs; and anigh it, yet with room for its boughs togrow freely, was a great bird-cherry tree, all covered now withsweet-smelling white blossoms. There they sat down on the trunk of atree felled last year, and she cast off her cloak, and took his facebetween her two hands and kissed him long and fondly, and for a whiletheir joy had no word. But when speech came to them, it was she thatspake first and said:
‘Gold-mane, my dear, sorely I wonder at thee and at me, how we arechanged since that day last autumn when I first saw thee. Whiles Ithink, didst thou not laugh when thou wert by thyself that day, and mockat me privily, that I must needs take such wisdom on myself, and lessonthee standing like a stripling before me. Dost thou not call it all tomind and make merry over it, now that thou art become a great chieftainand a wise warrior, and I am yet what I always was, a young maiden of thekindred; save that now I abide no longer for my love?’
Her face was exceeding bright and rippled with joyous smiles, and helooked at her and deemed that her heart was overflowing with happiness,and he wondered at her indeed that she was so glad of him, and he said:
‘Yea, indeed, oft do I see that morning in the woodland hall and thee andme therein, as one looketh on a picture; yea verily, and I laugh, yet isit for very bliss; neither do I mock at all. Did I not deem thee a Godthen? and am I not most happy now when I can call it thus to mind? Andas to thee, thou wert wise then, and yet art thou wise now. Yea, Ithought thee a God; and if we are changed, is it not rather that thouhast lifted me up to thee, and not come down to me?’
Yet therewithal he knit his brows somewhat and said:
‘Yet thou hast not to tell me that all thy love for thy Folk, and thyyearning hope for its recoverance, was but a painted show. Else whyshouldst thou love me the better now that I am become a chieftain, andtherefore am more meet to understand thy hope and thy sorrow? Did I notbehold thee as we stood before the Wolf of the Hall of Shadowy Vale, howthe tears stood in thine eyes as thou beheldest him, and thine hand inmine quivered and clung to me, and thou wert all changed in a moment oftime? Was all this then but a seeming and a beguilement?’
‘O young man,’ she said, ‘hast thou not said it, that we stood thereclose together, and my hand in thine and desire growing up in me? Dostthou not know how this also quickeneth the story of our Folk, and ourgoodwill towards the living, and remembrance of the dead? Shall theyhave lived and desired, and we deny desire and life? Or tell me: whatwas it made thee so chieftain-like in the Hall yesterday, so that thouwert the master of all our wills, for as self-willed as some of us were?Was it not that I, whom thou deemest lovely, was thereby watching theeand rejoicing in thee? Did not the sweetness of thy love quicken thee?Yet because of that was thy warrior’s wisdom and thy foresight an emptyshow? Heedest thou nought the Folk of the Dale? Wouldest thou sunderfrom the children of the Fathers, and dwell amongst strangers?’
He kissed her and smiled on her and said: ‘Did I not say of thee thatthou wert wiser than the daughters of men? See how wise thou hast mademe!’
She spake again: ‘Nay, nay, there was no feigning in my love for mypeople. How couldest thou think it, when the Fathers and the kindredhave made this body that thou lovest, and the voice of their songs is inthe speech thou deemest sweet?’
He said: ‘Sweet friend, I deemed not that there was feigning in thee: Iwas but wondering what I am and how I was fashioned, that I should makethee so glad that thou couldst for a while forget thy hope of the daysbefore we met.’
She said: ‘O how glad, how glad! Yet was I nought hapless. In despiteof all trouble I had no down-weighing grief, and I had the hope of mypeople before me. Good were my days; but I knew not till now how glad achild of man may be.’
Their words were hushed for a while amidst their caresses. Then shesaid:
‘Gold-mane, my friend, I mocked not my past self because I deem that Iwas a fool then, but because I see now that all that my wisdom could do,would have come about without my wisdom; and that thou, deeming thyselfsomething less than wise, didst accomplish the thing I craved, and thatwhich thou didst crave also; and withal wisdom embraced thee, along withlove.’
Therewith she cast her arms about him and said:
‘O friend, I mock myself of this: that erst thou deemedst me a God andfearedst me, but now thou seemest to me to be a God, and I fear thee.Yea, though I have longed so sore to be with thee since the day ofShadowy Vale, and though I have wearied of the slow wearing of the days,and it hath tormented me; yet now that I am with thee, I bless thetorment of my longing; for it is but my longing that compelleth me tocast away my fear of thee and caress thee, because I have learned howsweet it is to love thee thus.’
He wound his arms about her, and sweeter was their longing than mere joy;and though their love was beyond measure, yet was therein no shame toaught, not even to the lovely Dale and that fair season of spring, sogoodly they were among the children of men.
In a while they arose and turned homeward, and went over the open meadow,and it was yet early, and the dew was as heavy on the grass as before,though the wide sunlight was now upon it, glittering on the wet blades,and shining through the bells of the chequered daffodils till they lookedlike gouts of blood.
‘Look,’ said Sun-beam, as they went along by the same way whereas theycame, ‘deemest thou not that other speech-friends besides us have beenabroad to talk together apart on this morning of the eve of battle. Itis nought unwonted, that we do, even though we forget the trouble of thepeople to think of our own joy for a while.’
The smile died out of her face as she spoke, and she said:
‘O friend, this much may I say for myself in all sooth, that indeed Iwould die for the kindred and its good days, nor falter therein; but if Iam to die, might I but die in thine arms!’
He looked very lovingly on her, and put his arm about her and kissed herand said: ‘What ails us to stand in the doom-ring and bear witnessagainst ourselves before the kindred? Now I will say, that whatsoeverthe kindred may or can call upon me to do, that will I do, nor grudge thedeed: I am sackless before them.
But that is true which I spake to theewhen we came together up out of Shadowy Vale, to wit, that I am nostrifeful man, but a peaceful; and I look to it to win through this war,and find on the other side either death, or life amongst a happy folk;and I deem that this is mostly the mind of our people.’
She said: ‘Thou shalt not die, thou shalt not die!’
‘Mayhappen not,’ he said; ‘yet yesterday I could not but look into theslaughter to come, and it seemed to me a grim thing, and darkened the dayfor me; and I grew acold as a man walking with the dead. But tell me:thou sayest I shall not die; dost thou say this only because I am becomedear to thee, or dost thou speak it out of thy foresight of things tocome?’
She stopped and looked silently a while over the meadows towards thehouses of the Thorp: they were standing now on the border of a shallowbrook that ran down toward the Weltering Water; it had a little strand offine sand like the sea-shore, driven close together, and all moist,because that brook was used to flood the meadow for the feeding of thegrass; and the last evening the hatches which held up the water had beendrawn, so that much had ebbed away and left the strand aforesaid.
After a while the Sun-beam turned to Face-of-god, and she was becomesomewhat pale; she said:
‘Nay, I have striven to see, and can see nought save the picture of hopeand fear that I make for myself. So it oft befalleth foreseeing women,that the love of a man cloudeth their vision. Be content, dear friend;it is for life or death; but whichso it be, the same for me and theetogether?’
‘Yea,’ he said, ‘and well content I am; so now let each of us trust inthe other to be both good and dear, even as I trusted in thee the firsthour that I looked on thee.’
‘It is well,’ she said; ‘it is well. How fair thou art; and how fair isthe morn, and this our Dale in the goodly season; and all this abideth uswhen the battle is over.’
Once more her voice became sweet and wheedling, and the smile lit up herface again, and she pointed down to the sand with her finger, and said:
‘See thou! Here indeed have other lovers passed by across the brook.Shall we wish them good luck?’
He laughed and looked down on the sand, and said:
‘Thou art in haste to make a story up. Indeed I see that these firstfootprints are of a woman, for no carle of the Dale has a foot as small;for we be tall fellows; and these others withal are a man’s footprints;and if they showed that they had been walking side by side, simple hadbeen thy tale; but so it is not. I cannot say that these two pairs offeet went over the brook within five minutes of each other; but sure itis that they could not have been faring side by side. Well, belike theywere lovers bickering, and we may wish them luck out of that. Truly itis well seen that Bow-may hath done thine hunting for thee, dear friend;or else wouldest thou have lacked venison; for thou hast no hunter’seye.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘but wish them luck, and give me thine hand upon it.’
He took her hand, and fondled it, and said: ‘By this hand of myspeech-friend, I wish these twain all luck, in love and in leisure, infaring and fighting, in sowing and samming, in getting and giving. Is itwell enough wished? If so it be, then come thy ways, dear friend; forthe day’s work is at hand.’
‘It is well wished,’ she said. ‘Now hearken: by the valiant hand of theWar-leader, by the hand that shall unloose my girdle, I wish these twainto be as happy as we be.’
He made as if to draw her away, but she hung aback to set the print ofher foot beside the woman’s foot, and then they went on together, andsoon crossed the Bridge, and came home to the House of the Face.
When they had broken their fast, Face-of-god would straight get to hisbusiness of ordering matters for the warfare, and was wishful to speakwith Folk-might; but found him not, either in the House or the street.But a man said:
‘I saw the tall Guest come abroad from the House and go toward the Bridgevery early in the morning.’
The Sun-beam, who was anigh when that was spoken, heard it and smiled,and said: ‘Gold-mane, deemest thou that it was my brother whom weblessed?’
‘I wot not,’ he said; ‘but I would he were here, for this gear mustspeedily be looked to.’
Nevertheless it was nigh an hour before Folk-might came home to theHouse. He strode in lightly and gaily, and shaking the crest of hiswar-helm as he went. He looked friendly on Face-of-god, and said to him:
‘Thou hast been seeking me, War-leader; but grudge it not that I havecaused thee to tarry. For as things have gone, I am twice the man forthine helping that I was yester-eve; and thou art so ready and deft, thatall will be done in due time.’
He looked as if he would have had Face-of-god ask of him what made him sofain, but Face-of-god said only:
‘I am glad of thy gladness; but now let us dally no longer, for I havemany folk to see to-day and much to set a-going.’
So therewith they spake together a while, and then went their waystogether toward Carlstead and the Woodlanders.