THE NIGHTINGALE
FOULQUE the Cripple listened with a perturbed brow. “You should have
left him alone! A wretched herd-girl!”
“If I am to be knight,” said Garin hotly, “I will not read knighthood
so.”
“Psha!” said Foulque. “They put resistance on! It is a mask when they
seem unwilling. And if it were real, what then?—Saint Pol, what
then?—And you saw naught to tell you who he was?”
“No.”
Foulque fretted. “If I had been there, I should have found some colour
or sign! But you go as dreamily as if you were bewitched! You see
naught that’s to the point.”
“He had a blue robe and a surcoat of crimson, and shoes of brown
cordovan,” said Garin. “His sword had a rich hilt, and his gloves were
embroidered. I noted them where he had thrust them in the bosom of his
robe when I knelt to look at his wound. He was red-gold of hair and
hawk nosed, full-lipped, and with a scar on his cheek. I think that he
is older than I, but not much older.”
“Well, well!” said Foulque, “he may have been some wanderer from a
distance, with no recourse but his own hand. Moreover, for fame’s
sake, he will not be quick to talk about a younger man, and one of less
degree. If he found out neither your name nor house,—perhaps we’ll
hear no more of it.... Well, what have you to say? I have news for you!
The abbot hath been to Roche-de-Frêne, and on his way home is pleased
to sleep one night at Castel-Noir. A man of his brought notice this
morning. This is Tuesday—Friday he will be here.” Foulque rose and
limped across the hall in some excitement. “Poor and bare, God knows!
is Castel-Noir, but we will do what we can! My bed here he shall have,
and we will put up the hangings from Genoa, and strew the floor with
fair herbs. There’s wine enough, and Pierre shall begin his baking
to-morrow morn! Friday.—He will have, his man said, twenty in his
train. The sub-prior—five or six brothers—the rest stout serfs with
staves.—Friday!—Every man of ours must be set to fishing!”
When every man was sent to the stream, the company of fishermen covered
no great length of bank. Moreover all could not settle to fishing,
for some must forth to forage for the approaching horse, and to find
venison, fowls, and other matters for the Saturday morn. For poor was
the small black tower in the black wood! Foulque could furnish to his
lord a young brother for esquire, and, if a levy were made, ten men, by
no means prize men, with ten horses, by no means horses for a king’s
stable. Paladin was the only horse of that nature. A poor, small fief
was Castel-Noir—black keep and tower on a crag, set in a dark wood,
with a few fields beyond, and all under shadow of the mountains to the
north. South of it, only, ran the bright stream where fish were to be
caught.
Thursday sunrise, Garin took a fishing-rod and went down the crag by
the road cut, long since, in the rock, and through the wood to this
stream. In a great leather pouch slung over his shoulder he had, with
other matters, bread and meat. He meant to make a day of it, bringing
home in the evening good fish for Pierre’s larder. When he reached the
stream, he found there old Jean and his two grandsons and they had a
great basket, its bottom already flashing silver and iris.
“Good-morning, Jean and Pol and Arnaut,” said Garin.
“Good-morning, master! The Blessed Maries have sent good fishing! They
snap as soon as you touch the water.”
Farther down the stream he found Sicart. “How great a man, master, is
the abbot? Very great he must be if he eats all the fish we are taking!
It is a miracle!”
Garin moved down the stream seeking for a place that should seize
his fancy. The eagerness with which he had risen and sallied forth
disappeared. They would have enough for the Abbot and his train—more
than enough. At times he cared for fishing, but not, he found, to-day.
Why then fish, if there was no need? He still carried the rod, but he
continued to walk, making no motion to stop and put it into use. There
was a foot-path by the stream, and it and the gliding water led him on.
He wanted to think, or, more truly, to dream. Back in the black castle
all was topsy-turvy, and Foulque concerned only with family fortunes.
Now Garin walked, and now he leaned against some tree and gazed at the
flowing water; but on the whole he moved forward with such steadiness
that before the sun was much above the tree-tops the foot-path ceased,
having brought him to a great round stone and an overhanging pine, and
the end, on this side, of the fief of Castel-Noir. Beyond came a strip
of stony and unprofitable land, a debated possession, claimed by two
barons and of no especial use to any man. Garin threw himself down upon
the boundary stone and, chin in hand, regarded the sliding stream.
It was this stone, perhaps, that brought into mind Tuesday’s boulder
and the jongleur. Rather than the jongleur came the figure of the
jongleur’s lute. Garin’s fingers moved as though they felt beneath
them the strings. A verse was running, running through his head. Only
after a slow, lilting, inward saying of it over twice or thrice did it
come to him, like the opening of a flower, that it was his own, not
another’s. He had made it, lying there. He rose from the stone and
walked forward, still going with the gliding stream. As he walked, the
second verse came to him. He said over the two, said over his first
poem and said it over again, tasting it, savouring it, hearing it now
with music. He was in a dream of dawn....
There was no longer a path, but he went on over the stony soil, beneath
old gnarled and stunted trees. The sun rode high and made the water
a flood of diamonds. Garin walked with a light and rapid step. When
a tree came in his way he swerved and rounded it and went on, but he
was hardly conscious that it had been there. The fishing-rod was yet
in his hand, but he did not think of the rod, nor of fishing, nor of
Castel-Noir, nor Foulque, nor the abbot, nor of the decision which the
abbot’s visit would force. He hardly knew of what he was thinking. It
was diffused,—the world was diffused,—drifting and swinging, and in
the mist he touched a new power.
A hawk shot downwards, plunged beak in water, rose with the taken fish
and soared into the eye of day. Garin started, shook himself, and
looked about him. He had come farther than he meant. He half-turned,
then stood irresolute, then again faced downstream. The day was not
old, and a distaste seized him for going back and listening to Foulque
on what the abbot might or might not do. He wandered on.
An hour later he came upon another boundary mark. This was a cross cut
in stone, with a rude carving upon the block that formed the base.
Garin sat down to rest, and sitting so, fell to scraping with his
knife the encrusting lichen from this carving. There was a palm tree
and a pyramid, which stamped Egypt in mind. Here was Saint Joseph, and
here was the ass bearing the Mother and Child. Above was Latin, to
the effect that you were upon the lands of the Convent of Our Lady in
Egypt. Garin knew that, and that two miles down the stream the nuns
would be now at the noon office. He wondered if, yesterday or to-day,
they had sent Jael the herd back to her own. But, on the surface, at
least, of consciousness there floated no long thought of that matter.
His mood was one of half-melancholy, half-exaltation, all threaded with
the warm wonder of making verses.
The nature of the land changed here. For stone and dwarfed growth there
began a richer soil and nobler trees. The latter made, all along the
water’s edge, a narrow grove, with here and there a fairy opening and
lawn of fine grass. Garin, having scraped away the lichen, looked at
the sun, which was now past the meridian, and thought that he would
retrace his steps.
Before him, out of a covert a little way down the stream, a nightingale
sang suddenly. Garin listened, and it might be his mood of to-day
that made him think that never before had he heard any bird sing so
sweetly. It carolled on, rich and deep, and the young man went toward
it. The ribbon of wood was dark and sweet; the bird sang like a soul
imprisoned. When it silenced itself Garin still stood looking up into
its tree. Presently it flew from that bower and, crossing one of the
elfin lawns, lost itself in the farther trees. Garin went on to this
grove and it sang for him again. When it ceased he did not go back to
the boundary stone. This country pleased him and he thought, “I will go
on and see how Our Lady in Egypt looks from this side.”
He followed the stream a mile and more. It was slipping now beneath
mighty trees. Their arching boughs made a roof; it was like walking
in cloisters. Between the pillars, inland, could be seen fields and
vineyards and, at last, the convent’s self, with her olive trees behind
her. Garin came now to thickly planted laurels, a grove within a grove.
This he threaded, pushing aside the heavy leaves. The laurels ended
suddenly, standing close and trim, a high green wall. This followed a
curving line and half enclosed a goodly space of turf, a shaven floor
of emerald, laved by the little river and shaded by a plane, a poplar,
and a cedar. The cedar stood close to the laurels and close to Garin,
and beneath the cedar was placed a seat of stone carved like a great
chair. The spot was all chequered with light and shade, the air was
sweet and fine, and the water sang as it passed. A fairer place for
dreaming, for talk or sober merry-making, might not be found. Just now
it was as clean as fairyland of human occupancy.
Garin stepped from the laurel wall and sat in the stone seat. It
pleased him, this place! A sense of mystery gathered; he began to
dream, dream. All manner of coloured, gleaming thought-motes danced
over the threshold. The minutes passed.
Voices—women’s voices! Doubly a trespasser that he was, he was not
willing to be found here, reigning it from this seat over the sweep of
lawn, the three trees, and the singing water. He rose, and stepped back
into the wall of laurel; then, being young and not incurious, waited
to see who it was that was coming. Lay sisters, perhaps, going from
vineyard to vineyard, or bringing clothes for the washing to the river
bank which here was rightly shelving. A gleam of grey garments between
the tree-trunks on the other side of the sylvan theatre seemed to prove
him right; and indeed, in a moment, there did emerge three or four of
these same lay sisters—strong, tanned, peasant women, roughly dressed,
fit for outdoor labour. They carried on their heads huge osier baskets,
but when they set these down, what was taken out was not linen or
woollen for washing, but rugs of Eastern weave and cushions of Eastern
make.
Moreover, with or following the lay sisters came others—young
women—who were certainly not under convent rule. These seized the rugs
and cushions and scattered them here and there, to advantage, over the
grass. They also set out dishes of fruit and Eastern comfits, and one
placed a harp upon a square of gold silk which she spread beneath the
poplar. As they worked they chattered like magpies. They were dressed
well and fancifully but not richly; it was to be made out that they
were waiting-women of those who did dress richly. One cocked her ear,
then raised her hand in a gesture to the others, whereupon all fell
into a demure silence. The lay sisters who had been stolid and still
throughout, now drew off by a path which carried them to the vineyards.
The waiting women cast a look around, then, with nods of satisfaction,
picked up the empty baskets and found for them and for themselves some
pleasant subordinate haven down by the stream, around the corner of the
lawn.
The little lawn lay prepared, festive and a desert. Now was the moment
when Garin might withdraw and the rustle of the laurel leaves tell no
tale where were no ears to hear. Truly, he thought once and twice of
departing, but then before the third thought which might have passed
into action, he caught, floating out of the opposite wood, delightful
voices, laughter that rippled, and a sheen and flash of colours. What
he forthwith determined to do was to please a little longer eye and
ear and sate curiosity. Then—and it need not be long—he would turn,
and as noiselessly as an innocent green-and-brown serpent, slip away
toward Castel-Noir. Given that he were discovered, plain truth-telling
were not bad. Discovery might bring him rebuke not too scornful, with,
perhaps, some laughter in her eye.
He laid his fishing-rod down, then knelt beside it upon the brown
earth between the laurel stems. Couched so, he could look past the
stone seat and the cedar trunk, and so observe what pageant might
appear. Had he had a wand in his hand he could have touched with it
this carven chair.
Out from the shadowy opposite grove came bright ladies, seven or eight.
One was dressed in violet and one in rose, one in green and white, and
one in daffodil, one in a bright medley, one in white sprigged with
gold, and one in the colour of the sky. After the fashion of the time
their hair hung in long braids from beneath fillet, or garland, or
veil of gauze twisted turban-wise or floating loose. Their shoes were
of soft-coloured leather or of silk, their dress close-fitting and
sweeping the grass. The wide and long mantles that were worn by both
sexes were not in evidence here—the day was warm and the convent,
whence alone these fair ones could have come, at no distance. Garin
wondered, and then he bethought himself that some great reigning
countess—perhaps some duchess or princess of Italy or Spain or further
yet afield, perhaps some queen—might be travelling through the land,
going from one court to another and by the way pausing to refresh
herself in the house of Our Lady in Egypt. From Roche-de-Frêne, he
knew, there was no such absence. The man-at-arms at the inn had said
that the princesses Alazais and Audiart were seated with their ladies
to mark the jousts.... He lay and watched.
Of the bright apparitions two seemed of their full summer and prime,
more stately, more authoritative than the others. The others were in
their spring and early spring. Light or dark, blonde or brunette, all
had beauty. Garin’s eyes darkened and softened, and the corners of
his lips moved upward to see such an array, and the swimming movement
with which they dispersed themselves over the lawn, and to hear their
trained voices. All seemed gay and laughing, and yet there presently
appeared a discontent. The dame in daffodil took up the harp and swept
the strings.
“Ah!” cried the one in azure, “for a true troubadour!”
“For even a jongleur!”
“Ah, what is life without men!”
“Ah, for the tourney!”
“Ah, if there were in sight but a monastery!”
The older two, who had an air of responsibility, rebuked the others.
“Life is made up of to and fro, and sounds and silences! Be content! It
is but one month out of many.”
“As if months were as plentiful as cherries!”
“Ah, if I were a princess—”
“Hush!” warned the daffodil-clad, and began to play upon the harp.
Garin saw that another two were coming through the grove. One of these
would be the noble lady for whom it was all planned. His imagination
was active to-day with a deep, involuntary pulsing. Foix or Toulouse,
or the greater domains to the north and west, or it might be Aragon,
or it might be Italy? Or she might have come from Sicily, or like
Prince Rudel’s far lady, from a kingdom or duchy carved from Paynim
lands. Some Eastern touch in the scene made him dwell upon that.
No matter whence now she came, she must have lived on a day in the
long, the outspread, the curving and sunny lands of this very south.
The tongue of her ladies proved that. Wedded she might have been to
some great prince and borne away, and now returned for a time and
a pilgrimage to the land of birth.... All this and more was of his
imaging. He lay upon the dark earth and parted the laurel leaves that
he might see more clearly.
The two were now plain among the trees. One was a blonde of much
beauty, dressed in grey cendal and carrying a book which seemed to
belong to her companion. The latter was a little in advance, and she
came on without speaking, and so stepped from the wood upon the lawn.
The seven already arrived beneath the plane, the poplar, and the cedar
made a formal movement of courtesy, then gathered like a rainbow about
the one of first importance. Plaintiveness and discontent retired from
evidence, court habit came up paramount. You might have thought that
these were dryads or Dian’s nymphs, and no other spot than this wood
their loved home! There came to Garin’s ear a ripple of sweet voices,
but it seemed that their lady for whom had been spread the feast
was either silent or seldom-and low-speaking. She stood beneath the
shimmering, tremulous poplar, a slender shape of fair height. She was
dressed in some fine weave of dark blue with a girdle of samite studded
with gems. The ends of this girdle hung to her silken shoe. Her hair,
black and long, was braided with gems. She seemed young, young as the
youngest there. “Seemed” is used, because Garin saw not her face. She
wore, as did several of the others, a veil of Eastern device, but hers
was long and wide and threaded with gold and silver, and so worn that
it overhung and shielded every feature.
Attention was called to the placing of the rugs, the cushions, the
harp, the dishes of fruit and comfits. The one for whom they had waited
nodded her head and seemed to approve. She was not garrulous; there
seemed to breathe about her, he knew not what, a tone of difference.
All now moved to the water-edge, and for a time loitered there upon the
green and rushy bank. One raised her voice and sang,—
“Green are the boughs when lovers meet,
Grey when they part—”
The bevy turned and came up the sloping lawn to the three trees and
the cushions upon the grass. The shape in dark blue with the Eastern
veil moved beyond them to the cedar and the stone chair. Here she took
her seat, and when the others would have gathered about her waved them
back with a slender, long-fingered hand. One brought to her a basket of
grapes. She chose a purple cluster resting upon a web of vine leaves
but laid it untouched beside her upon the wide seat. There was a space
between her and the dark enshadowing cedar and those others resting
now upon the cushions. She sat quite still, a hand upon each arm of
the chair, the deep blue of her dress flowing about her, the gems of
the girdle ends making a sombre gleaming. The veil hid all her face
from Garin, lying so near. He felt in her something solitary, something
powerful, yet felt that she was young, young—She sat with her gaze
straight before her upon the blue crests that showed afar. She sat as
still as though an enchanter had bid her stay. And between her and the
young man crouching in the laurels streamed no wide ocean of the autumn
air, of the subtle ether. The moments passed, slow, plangent, like the
notes of the harp that was being played....
What happened to one or both? Did one only feel it, the one that knew
there were two—or did, in some degree, the other also, and think
it was a day-dream? All that Garin knew, kneeling there, was that
something touched him, entered him. It came across that space, or it
came from some background and space not perceived. It was measureless,
or it seemed to him without measure. It was clothed in marvel; it was
fulness and redoubling, it was more life. It was as loud as thunder,
and as still as the stillest inner whisper. It was so sweet that he
wished to weep, and yet he wished too to leap and spring and exult
aloud, to send his cry of possession to the skies. He felt akin to all
that his senses touched. But as for the form in the stone chair—he sat
with her there, she knelt with him here, they were one body.... With
a swimming feeling, her being seemed to pass from his. He knelt here,
Garin of the Black Castle, squire of Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and she
sat there whose face he had not seen—a great dame, lady doubtless of
some lord of a hundred barons each worthier than Raimbaut.
Garin gazed across the little space between, and now it was as though
it were half the firmament. She sat like a figure among the stars,
blue-robed, amid the deep blue, and the cloudy world was between them.
She grew like to a goddess—like to the Unattainable Ideal, and he
felt no longer like a king, but like the acolyte that lights the lamp
and kneels as he places it. Now it was the Age for this to happen,
and for one man to act as had acted that knight in the wood toward
Roche-de-Frêne, and for another to do as now did Garin.
For now he wished no longer to play the spy, and he turned very
carefully and silently in the laurels and crept away. In all his
movements he was lithe and clean, and he made no sound that the
brooding young figure in the stone chair attended to. Presently,
looking back, his eyes saw only the great height of the cedar, its dark
head against the blue heaven. The liquid, dropping notes of the harp
pursued him a little farther, but when he was forth from the laurel
grove they, too, passed upon the air. He was soon at the boundary
cross of Our Lady in Egypt, and then upon the waste and stony land that
set toward the fief of Castel-Noir. Was it only this morning, thought
Garin, that he had come this way? And the nightingale that sang so deep
and full—it was not in the boughs above—it was singing now in his own
heart!