The Hot Swamp

“I understand—with a shout, something like my battle-cry!”

“Not exactly so loud as that, but so as Bladud shall be sure to hear you; and he will probably be near to his father at the time.”

“Just so. What next?”

“Oh, that’s all you will have to do. Just retire among the other courtiers then, and leave the rest to me.”

“That’s a very short lesson, my little one; would you not like to be introduced to Bladud too? He does not know you, you know.”

“Certainly not; that would ruin all—you dear old goose. Just do exactly what I tell you, and you will be sure to go right.”

“How like your dear mother you are, my little one, in your modest requirements!”

Having finished the lesson, the little old woman retired to a remote part of the palace which, through Hafrydda’s influence, had been assigned to her, and the great northern chief, unbuckling his sword-belt, called lustily for his mid-day meal.

Customs at that date, you see, were more free-and-easy than they are now, and less ceremonious. The visitors at the palace of King Hudibras were expected only to appear at the royal board at the evening meal after all the business or pleasure of each day was over. At all other times they were supposed to do as they pleased and shout for food as they happened to require it.

It is perhaps unnecessary to comment on the exceeding convenience of this custom, leaving, as it did, every one to follow the bent of inclination, from earliest morn till dewy eve, with the prospect of an enjoyable reunion after dark—during which, of course, the adventures of each were narrated, exaggerated, underrated, or commented on, as the case might be, and the social enjoyments were enhanced by warlike and sentimental song as well as by more or less—usually more than less—thrilling story.

Chapter Thirty Six

The Dénouement

It was a sunny, frosty, glorious forenoon when King Hudibras awoke to the consciousness of the important day that was before him, and the importunate vacuum that was within him.

Springing out of bed with a right royal disregard of appearances he summoned his servitor-in-waiting and ordered breakfast.

In the breakfast-room he met the queen, Hafrydda, Bladud, and Dromas—the latter being now considered one of the family—and these five proceeded to discuss and arrange the proceedings of the day during the progress of the meal.

“You will join in the sports, of course, son Dromas,” said the king, “and show us how the Olympic victors carry themselves. Ha! I should not wonder if a few of our lads will give you some trouble to beat them.”

“You may be right, father,” returned the young man, modestly, “for one of your lads has already beaten me at most things.”

“You mean Bladud?” returned the king.

“Dromas is only so far right,” interposed the prince. “It is true that where mere brute force is required I usually have the advantage, but where grace and speed come into play I am lost.”

Of course Dromas would not admit this, and of course Hafrydda’s fair cheeks were crimsoned when the youth, accidentally looking up, caught the princess accidentally gazing at him; and, still more of course, the king, who was sharp as a needle in such matters, observed their confusion and went into a loud laugh, which he declared was only the result of merry thoughts that were simmering in his brain.

The reception was to be held in the large hall of the palace. No ladies were to be presented, for it must be remembered that these were barbarous times, and woman had not yet attained to her true position! Indeed, there was to be no ceremony whatever—no throne, no crown, no gold-sticks in waiting or other sticks of any kind. It was to be a sort of free-and-easy conversazione in the presence of the royal family, where, just before the sports began, any one who was moved by that ambition might hold personal intercourse with the king, and converse with him either on the affairs of State, or on private matters, or subjects of a more light and social kind—such as the weather.

At the appointed hour—which was indicated by that rough and ready but most natural of sun-dials, the shadow of a tree falling on a certain spot—the royal family adjourned to the large hall, and the unceremonious ceremony began.

First of all, on the doors being thrown open a crowd of nobles—or warriors—entered, and while one of them went to the king, and began an earnest entreaty that war might be declared without delay against a certain chief who was particularly obnoxious to him, another sauntered up to the princess and began a mild flirtation in the primitive manner, which was characteristic of the sons of Mars in that day—to the unutterable jealousy of Dromas, who instantly marked him down as a fit subject for overwhelming defeat at the approaching games. At the same time the family doctor paid his respects to the queen and began to entertain her with graphic accounts of recent cases—for doctors had no objection to talking “shop” in those days.

We have said that no ladies were admitted to places of public importance, such as grand-stands or large halls, but we have also pointed out that the ladies of the royal family and their female friends formed an exception to the rule. It was, as it were, the dawn of women’s freedom—the insertion of the small end of that wedge which Christianity and civilisation were destined to drive home—sometimes too far home!

Gradually the hall began to fill, and the hum of conversation became loud, when there was a slight bustle at the door which caused a modification though not a cessation of the noise.

It was caused by the entrance of Gadarn leading Branwen by the hand. The girl was now dressed in the costume that befitted her age and sex, and it is best described by the word simplicity. Her rich auburn hair fell in short natural curls on her neck—the luxuriant volume of it having, as the reader is aware, been sacrificed some time before. She wore no ornament of any kind save, on one side of her beautiful head, a small bunch of wild-flowers that had survived the frost.

At the time of their entrance, Bladud was stooping to talk with Hafrydda and did not observe them, but when he heard Gadarn’s sonorous voice he turned with interest to listen.

“King Hudibras,” said the northern chief, in a tone that produced instant silence, “I have found the lost one—my daughter Branwen.”

As they moved through the crowd of tall warriors Bladud could not at first catch sight of the girl.

“Ha! Hafrydda,” he said, with a pleasant smile, “your young friend and companion found at last. I congratulate you. I’m so glad that—”

He stopped, the colour fled from his cheeks, his chest heaved. He almost gasped for breath. Could he believe his eyes, for there stood a girl with the features, the hair, the eyes of Cormac, but infinitely more beautiful!

For some time the poor prince stood utterly bereft of speech. Fortunately no one observed him, as all were too much taken up with what was going on. The king clasped the girl’s hands and kissed her on both cheeks. Then the queen followed, and asked her how she could have been so cruel as to remain so long away. And Branwen said a few words in reply.

It seemed as if an electric shock passed through Bladud, for the voice also was the voice of Cormac!

At this point the prince turned to look at his sister. She was gazing earnestly into his face.

“Hafrydda—is—is that really Branwen?”

“Yes, brother, that is Branwen. I must go to her.”

As she spoke, she started off at a run and threw her arms round her friend’s neck.

“I cannot—cannot believe it is you,” she exclaimed aloud—and then, whispering in Branwen’s ear, “oh! you wicked creature, to make such a hypocrite of me. But come,” she added aloud, “come to my room. I must have you all to myself alone.”

For one moment, as they passed, Branwen raised her eyes, and, as they met those of the prince, a deep blush overspread her face. Another moment and the two friends had left the hall together.

We need not weary the reader by describing the games and festivities that followed. Such matters have probably been much the same, in all important respects, since the beginning of time. There was a vast amount of enthusiasm and willingness to be contented with little on the part of the people, and an incredible desire to talk and delay matters, and waste time, on the part of judges, umpires, and starters, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy, except that Bladud consented to run one race with his friend Dromas, and was signally beaten by him, to the secret satisfaction of Hafrydda, and the open amusement of the king.

But Branwen did not appear at the games, nor did she appear again during the remainder of that day, and poor Bladud was obliged to restrain his anxiety, for he felt constrained to remain beside his father, and, somehow, he failed in his various attempts to have a few words of conversation with his mother.

At last, like all sublunary things, the games came to an end, and the prince hastened to his sister’s room.

“May I come in?” he asked, knocking.

“Yes, brother.”

There was a peculiar tone in her voice, and a curious expression in her eyes, that the prince did not fail to note.

“Hafrydda,” he exclaimed, eagerly, “there is no Cormac?”

“True, brother, there is no Cormac—there never was. Branwen and Cormac are one!”

“And you knew it—and she knew it, all along. Oh, why did you agree to deceive me?”

“Nay, brother, I did not mean to deceive you—at least not at first. Neither did Branwen. I knew nothing about it till she came home, after being with you at the Swamp, and told me that she was impelled by sheer pity to follow you, intending to nurse you; thinking at first that we had let you go to die alone. Then she was caught in the woods by robbers, and she only escaped from them by putting on a boy’s dress and running away. They gave chase, however, caught her up, and, had it not been for you, would have recaptured her. The rest you know. But now, brother, I am jealous for my dear friend. She has expressed fear that, in her great pity for you, she may be thought to have acted an unwomanly part, and that you will perhaps despise her.”

“Unwomanly! despise!” exclaimed Bladud in amazement. “Hafrydda, do you regard me as a monster of ingratitude?”

“Nay, brother, that do I not. I think that you could never despise one who has felt such genuine pity for you as to risk and endure so much.”

“Hafrydda, do you think there is no stronger feeling than pity for me in the heart of Branwen?” asked Bladud in a subdued, earnest voice.

“That you must find out for yourself, brother,” answered the princess. “Yet after all, if you are only fond of Cormac, what matters the feeling that may be in the heart of Branwen? Are you in love with her already, Bladud, after so short an acquaintance?”

“In love with her!” exclaimed the prince. “There is no Cormac. There is but one woman in the wide world now—”

“That is not complimentary to your mother and myself, I fear,” interrupted his sister.

“But,” continued the prince, paying no regard to the interruption, “is there any chance—any hope—of—of—something stronger than pity being in her heart?”

“I say again, ask that of herself, Bladud; but now I think of it,” added the princess, leaping up in haste, “I am almost too late to keep an appointment with Dromas!”

She went out hurriedly, and the prince, full of new-born hopes mingled with depressing anxieties, went away into the neighbouring woods to meditate—for, in the haste of her departure, Hafrydda had neglected to tell him where Branwen was to be found, and he shrank from mentioning her name to any one else.

But accident—as we call it—sometimes brings about what the most laboured design fails to accomplish.

Owing to a feeling of anxiety which she could not shake off, Branwen had gone out that evening to cool her fevered brow in the woods, just a few minutes before the prince entered them. It was a strange coincidence; but are not all coincidences strange?

Seating herself on a fallen tree she cast up her eyes towards the sky where a solitary star, like a beacon of hope, was beginning to twinkle. She had not been there more than a few minutes when a rustle in the neighbouring thicket startled her. Almost before she had time to look round the prince stood before her. She trembled, for now she felt that the decisive hour had come—whether for good or evil.

Seating himself beside her, the prince took one of her hands in his and looked steadily into her downcast face.

“Corm— Bran—” he began, and stopped.

She looked up.

“Branwen,” he said, in a low, calm voice, “will it pain you very much to know that I am glad—inexpressibly glad—that there is no youth Cormac in all the wide world?”

Whether she was pained or not the girl did not say, but there was a language in her eyes which induced Bladud to slip his disengaged arm round—well, well, there are some things more easily conceived than described. She seemed about to speak, but Bladud stopped her mouth—how, we need not tell—not rudely, you may be sure—suffice to say that when the moon arose an hour later, and looked down into the forest that evening she saw the prince and Branwen still seated, hand in hand, on the fallen tree, gazing in rapt attention at the stars.

Chapter Thirty Seven

The Last

When Bladud walked out to the Hebrew’s hut next day and informed him of what had taken place, that long-suffering man heaved a deep sigh and expressed his intense relief that the whole affair was at last cleared up and had come to an end.

“I cannot view matters in the same light that you do, Beniah,” said the prince, “for, in my opinion, things have only now come to a satisfactory beginning. However, I suppose that you are thinking of the strange perplexities in which you have been involved so long.”

“I would not style them perplexities, prince, but intrigues—obvious and unjustifiable intrigues—in which innocent persons have been brought frequently to the verge of falsehood—if they have not, indeed, been forced to overstep the boundary.”

“Surely, Beniah, circumstances, against which none of us had power to contend, had somewhat to do with it all, as well as intrigue.”

“I care not,” returned the Hebrew, “whether it was the intrigues of your court or the circumstances of it, which were the cause of all the mess in which I and others have been involved, but I am aweary of it, and have made up my mind to leave the place and retire to a remote part of the wilderness, where I may find in solitude solace to my exhausted spirit, and rest to my old bones.”

“That will never do, Beniah,” said the prince, laughing. “You take too serious a view of the matter. There is no fear of any more intrigues or circumstances arising to perplex you for some time to come. Besides, I want your services very much—but, before broaching that point, let me ask why you have invited me to come to see you here. Hafrydda gave me your message—”

“My message!” repeated the Hebrew in surprise.

“Yes—to meet you here this forenoon on urgent business. If it is anything secret you have to tell me, I hope you have not got your wonderful old witch in the back cave, for she seems to have discovered as thorough a cure for deafness as I found for leprosy at the Hot Swamp.”

“Wonderful old witch!” repeated Beniah, with a dazed look, and a tone of exasperation that the prince could not account for. “Do you, then, not know about that old woman?”

“Oh! yes, I know only too much about her,” replied Bladud. “She has been staying at the palace for some time, as you know, and rather a lively time the old hag has given us. She went in to see my mother one day and threw her into convulsions, from which, I think, she has hardly recovered yet. Then she went to my father’s room—the chief Gadarn and I were with him at the time—and almost before she had time to speak they went into fits of laughter at her till the tears ran down their cheeks. I must say it seemed to me unnecessarily rude and unkind, for, although the woman is a queer old thing, and has little more of her face visible than her piercing black eyes, I could see nothing to laugh at in her shrivelled-up, bent little body. Besides this, she has kept the domestics in a state of constant agitation, for most of them seem to think her a limb of the evil spirit. But what makes you laugh so?”

“Oh! I see now,” returned the Hebrew, controlling himself by a strong effort. “I understand now why the old woman wished to be present at our interview. Come forth, thou unconscionable hag!” added Beniah, in the voice of a stentor, “and do your worst. I am past emotion of any kind whatever now.”

As he spoke he gazed, with the resigned air of a martyr, at the inner end of his cavern. Bladud also looked in that direction. A moment later and the little old woman with the grey shawl appeared; thrust out the plank bridge; crossed over, and tottered towards them.

“Dearie me! Beniah, there’s no need to yell so loud. You know I’ve got back my hearing. What want ye with me? I’m sure I have no wish to pry into the secrets of this young man or yourself. What d’ye want?”

But Beniah stood speechless, a strange expression on his face, his lips firmly compressed and his arms folded across his breast.

“Have you become as dumb as I was deaf, old man?” asked the woman, petulantly.

Still the Hebrew refused to speak.

“Have patience with him, old woman,” said Bladud, in a soothing tone. “He is sometimes taken with unaccountable fits—”

“Fits!” interrupted the old woman. “I wish he had the fits that I have sometimes. Perhaps they would cure him of his impudence. They would cure you too, young man, of your stupidity.”

“Stupidity!” echoed Bladud, much amused. “I have been credited with pride and haste and many other faults in my day, but never with stupidity.”

“Was it not stupid of you to go and ask that silly girl to wed you—that double-faced thing that knows how to cheat and deceive and—”

“Come, come, old woman,” said the prince, repressing with difficulty a burst of indignation. “You allow your old tongue to wag too freely. I suppose,” he added, turning to Beniah, “that we can conclude our conversation outside?”

But the Hebrew still remained immovable and sternly dumb.

Unable to understand this, Bladud turned again to the old woman, but, lo! the old woman was gone, and in her place stood Branwen, erect, with the grey shawl thrown back, and a half-timid smile on her face.

To say that Bladud was thunderstruck is not sufficient to indicate his condition. He stood as if rooted to the spot with his whole being concentrated in his wide-open blue eyes.

“Is my presumption too great, Bladud?” asked the girl, hesitatingly. “I did but wish to assure you that I have no other deceptions to practise. That I fear—I hope—that—”

The prince, recovering himself, sprang forward and once again stopped her mouth—not with his hand; oh! by no means!—while Beniah, with that refinement of wisdom which is the prerogative of age, stepped out to ascertain whether it happened to be rain or sunshine that ruled at the time. Curiously enough he found that it was the latter.

That evening the doctor of the royal household was summoned by an affrighted servitor to the apartment of Gadarn, who had been overheard choking. The alarmed man of medicine went at once, and, bursting into the room without knocking, found the great northern chief sitting on the edge of his couch purple in the face and with tears in his eyes. The exasperated man leaped up intending to kick the doctor out, but, changing his mind, he kicked the horrified servitor out instead, and, taking the doctor into his confidence, related to him an anecdote which had just been told to him by Bladud.

“It will be the death of the king,” said Gadarn. “You had better go to him. He may need your services.”

But the king was made of sterner stuff than his friend imagined. He put strong constraint upon himself, and, being not easily overcome by feeling—or anything else under the sun—he lived to relate the same anecdote to his wife and daughter.

The day following, Bladud resumed with the Hebrew the conversation that had been interrupted by Branwen.

“I was going to have said to you, Beniah, that I want your services very much.”

“You had said that much, prince, before Bran—I mean Cor—that is, the old woman—interrupted us. How can I serve you?”

“By going back with me to the Hot Swamp and helping to carry out a grand scheme that I have in my brain.”

The Hebrew shook his head.

“I love not your grand schemes,” he said, somewhat sternly. “The last grand scheme that your father had was one which, if successfully carried out, would have added a large portion of Albion to his dominions, and would have swept several tribes off the face of the earth. As it was, the mere effort to carry it out cost the lives of many of the best young men on both sides, and left hundreds of mothers, wives, sisters, and children to mourn their irreparable losses, and to wonder what all the fighting was about. Indeed, there are not a few grey-bearded men who share that wonder with the women and children, and who cannot, by any effort of their imagination, see what advantage is gained by either party when the fight is over.”

“These grey-beards must be thick-skulled, then,” replied the prince with a smile, “for does not the victor retain the land which he has conquered?”

“Yea, truly, and he also retains the tombs of the goodly young men who have been slain, and also the widows and sweethearts, and the national loss resulting from the war—for all which the land gained is but a paltry return. Moreover, if the All-seeing One cared only for the victors, there might be some understanding of the matter—though at the cost of justice—but, seeing that He cares for the vanquished quite as much as for the victorious, the gain on one side is counterbalanced by the loss on the other side, while the world at large is all the poorer, first, by the loss of much of its best blood, second, by the creation of a vast amount of unutterable sorrow and bitter hatred, and, third, by a tremendous amount of misdirected energy.

“Look, for instance, at the Hot Swamp. Before the late war it was the abode of a happy and prosperous population. Now, it is a desolation. Hundreds of its youth are in premature graves, and nothing whatever has been gained from it by your father that I can see.”

“But surely men must defend themselves and their women and children against foes?” said Bladud.

“Verily, I did not say they should not,” replied Beniah. “Self-defence is a duty; aggressive war, in most cases (I do not say in all), is a blunder or a sin.”

“I think that my mind runs much on the same line with yours, Beniah, as to these things, but I am pretty sure that a good many years will pass over us before the warriors of the present day will see things in this light.”

One is apt to smile at Bladud’s prophetic observation, when one reflects that about two thousand seven hundred years have elapsed since that day, and warriors, as well as many civilians, have not managed to see it in this light yet!

“However,” continued the prince, “the scheme which runs in my head is not one of war—aggressive or defensive—but one of peace, for the betterment of all mankind. As you know, I have begun to build a city at the Hot Swamp, so that all who are sick may go to that beautiful country and find health, as I did. And I want your help in this scheme.”

“That is well, prince, but I see not how I can aid you. I am not an engineer, who could carry out your devices, nor an architect who could plan your dwellings. And I am too old for manual labour—though, of course, it is not for that you want me.”

“You are right, Beniah. It is not for that. I have as many strong and willing hands to work as I require, but I want wise heads, full of years and experience, which may aid me in council and guard me from the blunders of youth and inexperience. Besides, man was not, it seems to me, put into this world merely to enjoy himself. If he was, then are the brutes his superiors, for they have no cares, no anxieties about food or raiment, or housing, and they enjoy themselves to the full as long as their little day lasts. There is surely some nobler end for man, and as you have given much study to the works and ways and reputed words of the All-seeing One, I want you to aid me in helping men to look upward—to soar like the eagle above the things of earth, as well as to consider the interests of others, and so, as far as may be, unlearn selfishness. Will you join me for this end?”