Via Crucis | Page 6

since the days of Pliny. He wore his hair neither
long nor short, but the silky locks were carefully parted in the middle
and smoothed back in rich dark waves. There was something almost
irritating in their unnatural smoothness, in the perfect transparency of
the man's healthy olive complexion, in the mouselike sleekness of his
long arching eyebrows, and in the perfect self-satisfaction and
confidence of his rather insolent reddish-brown eyes. His straight round
throat, well proportioned, well set upon his shoulders, and transparently
smooth as his own forehead, was thrown into relief by the exquisite

gold embroidery that edged the shirt of finest Flemish linen. He wore a
close-fitting tunic of fine scarlet cloth, with tight sleeves slightly turned
back to display his shapely wrists; it was gathered to his waist by a
splendid sword-belt, made of linked and enamelled plates of silver, the
work of a skilled Byzantine artist, each plate representing in rich
colours a little scene from the life and passion of Christ. The straight
cross-hilted sword stood leaning against the wall near the great
chimney-piece, but the dagger was still at the belt, a marvel of
workmanship, a wonder of temper, a triumph of Eastern art, when
almost all art was Eastern. The hilt of solid gold, eight- sided and
notched, was cross-chiselled in a delicate but deep design, picked out
with rough gems, set with cunning irregularity; the guard, a hollowed
disk of steel, graven and inlaid in gold with Kufic characters; the blade,
as long as a man's arm from the elbow to the wrist-joint, forged of steel
and silver by a smith of Damascus, well balanced, slender, with deep
blood-channels scored on each side to within four fingers of the
thrice-hardened point, that could prick as delicately as a needle or
pierce fine mail like a spike driven by a sledge-hammer. The tunic fell
in folds to the knee, and the close- fitted cloth hose were of a rich dark
brown. Sir Arnold wore short riding-boots of dark purple leather,
having the tops worked round with a fine scarlet lacing; but the
spur-leathers were of the same colour as the boot and the spurs
themselves of steel, small, sharp, unornamented, and workmanlike.
Six years had passed since that evening, and still, when the Lady Goda
closed her eyes and thought of Sir Arnold, she saw him as she had seen
him then, with every line of his expression, every detail of his dress,
sitting beside her in the warm firelight, leaning forward a little in his
chair, and talking to her in a tone of voice that was meant to be
monotonous to the sleeper's ear, but not by any means to her own.
Between Warde and Curboil the acquaintance had matured--had been
in a measure forced in its growth by circumstances and mutual
obligations; but it had never ripened into the confidence of friendship
on Warde's side, while on Sir Arnold's it had been but a well-played
comedy to hide his rising hatred for the Lady Goda's husband. And she,
on her side, played her part as well. An alliance in which ambition had
held the place of heart could not remain an alliance at all when

ambition had been altogether disappointed. She hated her husband for
having disappointed her; she despised him for having made nothing of
his many gifts and chances, for clinging to an old cause, for being old-
fashioned, for having seen much and taken nothing--which makes 'rich
eyes and poor hands'--for being slow, good-natured, kind-hearted, and a
prey to all who wished to get anything from him. She reflected with
bitterness that for a matter of seven or eight years of waiting, and a turn
of chance which would have meant happiness instead of misery, she
might have had the widowed Sir Arnold for a husband and have been
the Archbishop of Canterbury's cousin, high in favour with the winning
side in the civil war and united to a man who would have known how
to flatter her cold nature into a fiction of feeling, instead of wasting on
her the almost exaggerated respect with which a noble passion envelops
its object, but which, to most women, becomes in the end unspeakably
wearisome.
Many a time during those six years had she and Sir Arnold met and
talked as on the first night. Once, when the Empress Maud had taken
King Stephen prisoner, and things looked ill for his followers, Warde
had insisted that his neighbour should come over to Stoke Regis, as
being a safer place than his own castle; and once again, when Stephen
had the upper hand, and Sir Raymond was fighting desperately under
Gloucester, his wife had taken her son, and the priest, and some of her
women, and had ridden over to ask