Part 7

"Excuse me," Simon interpolated; for Simon was thirty years old, and hoped to live to ninety, but the dryad took no heed of his interruption.

"For many generations few mortals have come to this forest; none, I think, since Alexander died."

"That was not the day before yesterday, neither," Simon commented. He was wondering if the maid were truly mad or merely a piece of mystification. Anyway, she was very fair, the grass was soft, the night air kindly, a rising moon smiled through the trees, and Simon was always ripe for love-making.

"Sweeting," he began, jovially, "if you have never loved mortal man it is high time that you quarrel with this continence, and though I do not greatly credit your tale, I am ready to woo you merrily."

It is always disconcerting to a swain, be he sentimentalist or sensualist, to find that his proposals of passion are entertained with hilarity. So it was with Simon when the girl greeted him with a peal of the cheerfulest laughter that ever had rattled about his ears, while she swayed on her shapely legs like a bell-flower to a breeze. So children laugh at their play; so gods laugh at the muddles of mortals, bright, sweet, whole-hearted laughter, brilliant as the songs of birds.

"You foolish Bœotian," she said, when a pause in her laughter left her breath to speak, "you do not think I would welcome your wooing?" And once again the musical gusts of merriment shook her, and her eyes danced and her whole body trembled with delight.

Simon glowered at her, very red-faced, very sulky, very hot on his purpose. He had overcrowed coy reluctance ere this.

"Welcome or no welcome," he cried, "I mean to clip you in my arms. The forest is silent, you are my prize, you shall follow your mother's example."

He made a step towards the girl as he spoke, with his face as red as a peony, and stretched out his big, brown hands to seize her white body. To his surprise she made no effort to evade him, and for one wild moment it was pleasure to clasp her soft body close to his; but before he had time to turn his clasp into an embrace he found himself, to his bewilderment, plucked from the ground as if he had been caught in the clutch of a whirlwind, and then in another astonishing instant he realized that the maiden had flung him from her as if his mighty mass of manhood had been no bulkier than a cradled doll, and that he was travelling rapidly through the air towards his mother earth. Then he countered the ground with a prodigious thump that seemed to squelch the breath out of his lungs and to shake every bone and strain every sinew of his body. Sick and dizzy and all of an ache he lay on his back on the grass, rigid as a man in a catalepsy, and staring in unfamiliar terror at the maiden, whose beautiful face was suddenly fierce with anger.

"You fool," she cried, "learn that I rule in this forest. I have dealt thus gently with you for this once"--Simon groaned inwardly as she said this, and wondered if he had a whole bone left in his body--"but if you vex me again I shall be tempted to do you some hurt."

Simon made an effort to move, and the effort hurt him sorely, and he marvelled at the girl's ideas of gentleness and hurting. The Olympian sternness of Argathona's brow softened a little at the sight of that supine image of misery.

"Will you promise to offend no more?" she asked, and Simon cried back at her, speaking from the very core of his heart:

"I promise."

The dryad's frown faded, her serene calm rekindled.

"You will do well to keep your word," she said, merrily, "for my sinews are knit with the vigor of the Age of Gold, and I have no need to fear the children of men."

"As to that," Simon protested, as stoutly as he could under the somewhat undignified conditions, "I have my failings, it may be, but I am an honest soldier, and I never broke my word in my life."

"Then get on your feet again," said Argathona, gently, and she reached out her hands to his, extended, and lifted him up standing as easily as if he had been a baby; and at the touch of her fingers Simon felt instantly that his blood was running anew and that the chill which gripped at his heart dissolved before the flame of life revived. He made to stretch his stiff arms, and found to his joy that he succeeded. He moved his legs this way and that with a painful relish in their obedience. It was good to find himself still all of a piece.

"Ah," he sighed, "how stiff I be! It is tedious to feel like a tree."

Argathona's brows knitted slightly, and Simon saw that he had bungled, and tried to gloss his blunder. He had no doubt now as to his companion's powers if he still questioned her narrative, and he thought it well to show respect to her alleged sylvan kinship.

"Of course, there are trees and trees--" he began to stammer, but the dryad with a whisk of her myrtle twig warned him to keep his peace, and he shut his mouth tightly. She sat comfortably down upon the turf, crossing her legs under her as a lad might, and motioned to him to take his ease. Simon gingerly lowered himself to the ground with his chin in his hand. He was not a little afraid of the amazing maid, for which he was scarcely to be blamed; but he was also heartily her admirer, for which he was wholly to be commended. She stared at him and smiled, and Simon stared at her and rubbed his head wistfully.

"Here is a wonder out of a wood," he said. "May the devil fly away with me if I know what to make of you."

"There is nothing to wonder at," Argathona answered, gravely. "I belong to the old, strong race, the kin of the gods, and the strength of the gods runs in my body though my sire was a mortal man. Also I know something of the secrets of the ancient wood. Otherwise I am like yourself, thinking the same thoughts, living the same life, sharing the same pleasures of hunger and thirst, sleep and waking, and the change of the seasons. The only difference is that there will come a time when none of these things can live for you, and that time will never come for me. I shall go on with the dawn and the sunset and the wheeling stars and the changing seasons and the perpetual years."

"The difference is a pretty big one," Simon grunted; "but let that pass."

He looked at the girl curiously; he was now quite prepared to be devoted to her, though he was also quite prepared to believe her a witch. There were witches and witches, and this seemed an honest one. But her claim to endless existence bewildered him. He admitted to himself that it would sound very pleasant if applied to his own case. It must be agreeable, he thought, to go on cheerfully eating and drinking and making love, and fighting and sleeping and gaming and riding a-horseback and experiencing all the other enjoyable processes appertaining to a strong man's life, day in and day out, year in and year out through the centuries, with never any fear of finding wine and love and pastime uninteresting or condemned to end. At least, the maid was not making game of him; she was fixed in her strange story; and, anyway, he was pledged her friend.

"There is one thing that puzzles me," he said, bluntly--"how does it happen that you, who have lived in this wood since your old friends the gods decamped from paradise, and who talk, as I should think, the jargon of ancient days, can converse with me, who remember no more than thirty summers and was born over-seas in France?"

Argathona smiled amiably at his quandary.

"It is given to us," she said, "who are kindred with the gods, to say in our speech the thoughts of all men, and to understand with our ears the thoughts of all men. When you speak I hear your meaning in the words of the woodland, and when I speak to you my meaning takes possession of you and you shape it for yourself into the usage of your familiar speech, and so it will be for me always, wherever I go."

Simon nodded. If this were so he could understand that something in her utterance which seemed alien and quaint to him. Here truly was a gift scarcely less enviable than the grace of perdurable life. Argathona interrupted his meditations.