explicit
THE WHITE ROBE
A SAINT’S SUMMARY
“Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
and faithfulness the girdle of his reins;
and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.”
FOR
FRANCES NEWMAN
— inevitably—
this story of dead lovers that were faithful
1. OF HIS MANNER OF LIFE IN THE SECULAR
Herewith begins the history of that Odo, called Le Noir, who nevertheless, even as the morning star makes light the womb of a black cloud, shone with the bright beams of his life and teaching; who by his radiance led into the light them that shivered in the gray cloud of the shadow of death; and who, like unto the rainbow giving light in the white clouds, set forth in his righteous ending the seal of his fond Master’s covenant.
His life, or legend, narrates at outset that Odo had tended the sheep of Guillaume Diaz for nearly a year before he went into the Druid wood which is called Bovion, with Pierre la Charonne. It was thus that, under an elm tree, young Odo, who was as yet a little stained with the dust of his worldly journeying, first saw the Lord of the Forest.
That dark Master gave a wolf skin to each of the boys and a pot of ointment with which a man might anoint his body whensoever he was wearied of inhabiting it. The Master, also, after they had made a covenant with him and had tendered homage to both of his faces, baptized the boys, after the quaint formula of his very old religion, with the new and secret names of Prettyman and Princox.
After that, the pair used to run coursing in the shape of wolves until, in the unfortunate manner tiffs come about so quickly out of the hot-headed play of youth, the two lads quarreled one night over a particularly fine heifer. They fought; and after Odo had feasted upon two delicacies instead of one, then Black Odo hunted alone.
The best time for this joyous gaming, he found, was an hour or a half-hour before dawn when the moon was on the wane. The lustiness of his chosen overlord was then at prime; and those relatively parvenu gods and archangels, as yet precariously perched up in heaven, seemed not strong enough to deal with rebels. It was then that Odo used to snarl and yelp his praise of the kindly power which enabled him without any hindrance to enjoy the most profound and soul-stirring delights. He exulted, as a zealous Old Believer, thus to attest the strength and shrewdness of his dark Master, which could outwit so cunningly their celestial adversaries.
At this season Odo le Noir went as an animal somewhat shorter and stouter than a real wolf, with a smaller head, a pronged tail, and a rather reddish pelt. He diverted himself with sheep and dogs and cattle of all kinds, but the young of his own race he found to be the daintiest hunting.
There was no little gossip, and some serious complaint, about the wild beast which was ravaging the Val-Ardray district, because, with the habitual impetuosity of youth, Black Odo kept no measure in his recreations. The ill-nourished cattle and children of the lower classes were of no large value. But, at Nointel, Odo had entered the Lord of Basardra’s home, and, finding no one there except the Countess’ last baby, in its gilded and blue-veiled cradle, he had seized and carried off this really important sprig of nobility; and by-and-by, behind a hedge in the garden, he left the remainder of the ruined small body to be discovered, as it happened, by the Lord of Basardra himself. No nobleman could view without displeasure the untidiness of such freedoms with his offspring.
Odo created even more scandal, however, when near Lisuarte he attacked the Castellan’s daughter, a charming and delightfully plump young lady of eleven. Her also he put out of living, by-and-by. But everyone knew there had been something irregular about the affair, because her white and red garments were not torn in quite the way that they would have been if wolves born of a wolf’s body had made the assault; and only the lower portions of her belly had been eaten.
Thus for a while Odo le Noir lived very merrily and was obedient to no one save the Lord of the Forest. This loving master initiated the boy into old and elaborate diversions, and he promised an even finer future.
“I design great things for you, my Prettyman,” the Master would assure Black Odo, “and I intend that you shall go far in the service to which we are both enlisted.”
2. OF HIS ARDENT LOVE AND APPROACH TO MARTYRDOM
Now in these years Ettarre was living, in the appearance of a peasant girl, at the foot of the hills behind Perdigon, and she made her home in the thatched hut of an ancient couple who regarded and treated her as their own child. They loved their fosterling; they did not suspect that she had been fetched from the gray spaces behind the moon to live upon earth, in many bodies, as the eternal victim and the eternal derider of all human poets who for a stinted season have youth in their hearts; and, in fact, there was at this time no talk of any sort about Ettarre, except that here and there people said she was one of the witches of Amneran.
At this time also, on an April afternoon, in open daylight, a wolf attacked the peasant girl Ettarre while she was watching the cow and the four sheep. She defended herself boldly with the fallen branch of an oak tree. After that, the stout reddish-colored animal drew back and sat down like a dog upon his haunches, at a more comfortably remote distance, of about twelve paces, and I thence looked at her for a moment or two. A thrush chirped and twittered overhead. The wolf presently yawned; he trotted away; and Ettarre at supper mentioned, as a curious circumstance, that the beast’s tail was pronged.
It was just after this that young Odo le Noir began his courtship of Ettarre the peasant girl, whom some believed to be a witch-woman, and now the boy followed her everywhither.
“Most charming Ettarre! my own heart’s darling!” he would say, “there was never anybody who was more white and tender than is your body.”
“But you, Black Odo, are much too dark for my taste.”
“I did not speak of taste, Ettarre. Yet your bright eyes so dazzle me that I know not of what I am speaking.”
“Your eyes, Black Odo, are too strange and deep-set. When, as so rarely happens, you look straight into my face, then your wild eyes, Black Odo, are made horrible by that red and flaring light which shows behind them.”
“Do you not laugh at me, Ettarre, but let us two be friends after the manner of the friendly beasts!”
“I would not have you laugh, black beast; for your teeth are long and sharp, and I loathe the sight of them.”
“Yet is my hunger for you very great—”
“And what is that to me, whose dislike of you is so much greater?”
“Let us touch hands, then, in farewell!”
“Not even your hand will I touch willingly, Black Odo, for your finger-nails are unpleasantly long and like the claws of a wolf.”
With that, the beautiful young girl fled away from him, across a meadow where cowslips grew. It seemed to Odo that a strange and troubling music followed after her. In any case, this meeting was but a sample of many other meetings. And never at any time would Ettarre listen to his wooing; but the boy Odo continued to desire this peasant girl.