An autumn morning at dawn, the beach at Dover, the tide at flood, and a
hundred half naked sailors launching a long, black Norman sea-boat bows
on, over chocks through the low surf to the grey swell beyond. The
little vessel had been beached by the stern, with a slack chain hooked
to her sides at the water-line, and a long hawser rove through a rough
fiddle-block of enormous size, and leading to a capstan set far above
high-water mark and made fast by the bight of a chain to an anchor
buried in the sand up to the heavy wooden stock. And now a big old man
with streaming grey beard, and a skin like a salted ox-hide, was
slacking the turns of the hawser from the capstan-drum as the boat
moved slowly down over the well-greased chocks, stopping short now and
then of her own accord, and refusing to move on till twenty stout
sailors on each side, their legs half buried in the sand, their broad
shoulders flattened under the planking, their thick brown hands planted
upon their thighs, like so many Atlases, each bearing a world, had
succeeded, by alternately straining and yielding, in making the little
vessel rock on her keel, and start again toward the water's edge. On
board, the master stood at the stern, ready to ship the long rudder as
soon as she had taken the water. Two men in the bows took in the slack
of the cable, by which the anchor had been dropped some fifty yards
out, so as to keep her head straight when she should leave the
temporary ways. By the mast, for the vessel had but one, stood Gilbert
Warde, watching all that was done, with the profoundly ignorant
interest which landsmen always show in nautical matters. It seemed very
slow to him, and he wondered why the man with the long beard, far up
the beach, did not let go, so that the boat might launch herself. And
while he was trying to solve the problem, something happened which he
could not understand: a chorus of wild yells went up from the sailors
under the sides, the master in the stern threw up one hand and shouted,
the old man let go and yelled back an answer, Gilbert heard a rattling
of chains, and then all at once the boat gathered way, and shot like an
arrow through the low curling surf, far out upon the heaving grey water
beyond, while the two men in the bows got in the slack of the cable,
hand over hand, like madmen, panting audibly, till at last the vessel
swung off by her head and rode quietly at her anchor. An hour later,
with twenty sweeps swinging rhythmically in the tholes, and a fair
southwesterly breeze, the sharp-cut boat was far out in the English
Channel, and before night, the wind holding fair and freshening, the
master dropped anchor almost under the shadow of the Count of Flanders'
castle at Calais. So Gilbert Warde left England, a wanderer,
disinherited of all that should have been his, owing all that he had to
Lambert de Clare, Abbot of Sheering, in the shape of mail and other
armour, with such fine clothes as a young nobleman should have with him
on a journey, two horses, and a purse of which the contents should last
him several months on his travels. For attendants he had with him a
fair-haired Saxon lad who had run away from Stoke to Sheering, and had
refused to leave Gilbert, whom he looked upon as his lawful master; and
there was with him, too, a dark-skinned youth of his own age, a
foundling, christened Dunstan by the monks after a saint of their
order, brought up and taught at the abbey, who seemed to know neither
whose child he was nor whence he came, but could by no means be induced
to enter the novitiate so long as the world had room for wanderers and
adventurers. He was a gifted fellow, quick to learn and tenacious to
remember, speaking Latin and Norman French and English Saxon as well as
any monk in the abbey, quick of hand and light of foot, with daring
black eyes in which the pupils could hardly be found, while the whites
were of a cold, blue grey and often bloodshot; and he had short,
straight black hair, and a face that made one think of a young falcon.
He had begged so hard to be allowed to go with Gilbert, and it was so
evident that he was not born to wear out a church pavement with his
knees, that the abbot had given his consent. During the last weeks
before Gilbert's departure, when he was hourly gaining strength and
could no longer bear to be shut up within the walls of the convent, he
had made a companion of Dunstan, walking and riding with him, for the
fellow could ride, and sometimes entering into long arguments with him
about matters of belief and conscience and honour, and the two had
become attached to each other by their unlikeness; not precisely as
friends and equals, yet by no means as master and man; it was rather
the sort of relation which often existed between knight and squire,
though the two were of the same age, and though Gilbert had no
immediate prospect of winning knightly spurs.
It would have been hard, however, to admit that Dunstan could ever
develop into a knight himself. There were strange little blanks in his
ideas of chivalry, curious, unfeeling spots in his moral organization,
which indicated another race, another inheritance of thought, the
traditions of a world older and less simple than the one in which
Gilbert had been brought up.
For Gilbert was the type of noble youth in the days when the light of
chivalry had dawned upon an age of violence, but was not yet fully
risen. God, honour, woman--these made up the simple trinity of a
knight's belief and reverence, from the moment when the Church began to
make an order of fighting men, with ceremonies and obligations of their
own, thereby forever binding together the great conceptions of true
Christianity and true nobility.
In the absence of anything like real learning among the laymen of those
days, education in its simplest and most original sense played a very
large part in life, and Gilbert had acquired that sort of culture in
its highest and best form. The object of mere instruction is to impart
learning for some distinct purpose, but most chiefly, perhaps, in order
that it may be a means of earning a livelihood. The object of education
is to make men, to produce the character of the man of honour, to give
men the inward grace of the gentleman, which cannot manifest itself
outwardly save in good manners, modesty of bearing, and fearlessness;
and such things in earlier days were profoundly associated in the minds
of men with the inward principles and the outward rites of
Christianity. It was the perfect simplicity, and in a measure the ample
harmony, of beliefs, principles, and rules of action that made life
possible at all at a time when the modern art of government was in its
earliest infancy, when the idea of a constitution had been lost in the
chaos of the dark ages, and when the direction of kingdoms,
principalities, and societies was a purely personal matter, wholly
dependent upon individual talent or caprice, virtue or vice, charity or
greed. Without some such foundation in the character of the times,
society, the world, and the Church must have fallen a prey to the
devouring ambitions of that most horrible of human monsters, the
princely unbeliever of the middle ages, who flourished again and again,
sporadically, from England to Constantinople, from Paris to Rome, but
who almost invariably ended in disastrous failure, overcome and trodden
down by the steadily advancing morality of mankind. Such men were John
the Twelfth, of the evil race of Theodora in Rome, and the Jewish
Pierleone who lived a hundred years later, and King John of England,
and last and greatest of all, perhaps, as he was most certainly the
worst, Caesar Borgia.
To be a gentleman when Henry Plantagenet was a boy of twelve, and
Gilbert Warde was going to the Duke of Normandy's court, implied not
many gifts, few principles, and two or three accomplishments at most;
but it meant the possession of those simple requirements in their very
best accepted form, and that species of thoroughness in a few matters
which has been at the root of social superiority in all ages. We have
heard of amateur artists, amateur soldiers, amateur statesmen; but no
one has ever heard of an amateur gentleman. Gilbert Warde knew little
Latin beyond the few prayers taught him by the manor priest at Stoke;
but in the efficacy of those prayers he believed with all his heart and
soul. The Norman French language of the nobles in England was no longer
that of their more refined cousins over the water; but though his
tongue betrayed him for an Englishman, Gilbert had the something which
was of more worth among his equals than a French accent--the grace, the
unaffected ease, the straightforward courtesy, which are bred in bone
and blood, like talent or genius, but which reach perfection only in
the atmosphere to which they belong, and among men and women who have
them in the same degree. Possessing belief and good manners, the third
essential was skill in arms, and, as has been seen, Gilbert was a match
for a swordsman of considerable reputation. The only absolutely
necessary accomplishment for a gentleman in his day was a thorough
knowledge of the chase as a fine art in all its branches, from falconry
to boar-hunting, and in this respect Gilbert was at least the equal of
the average young noble. In spite of his youth, he was therefore
thoroughly equipped for the world; and besides the advantages here set
forth, he had the very great one of feeling that, although he might be
going among strangers, he was going to meet men all brought up to act
and think like himself, in the belief that their ways of acting and
thinking were very much better than those of other people.
But as he rode along the dunes, he was not reflecting upon his own
gifts or prospects. His life was strange to him by its sudden and
complete change, from an existence of more or less peaceful enjoyment,
in which the certainty of fortune, local dignity, and unthwarted love
made the idea of ambition look empty and foolish, to the state of
possessing only a pair of good horses, good weapons, and a little ready
money, with which to lay siege to the universe. Yet even that wide
difference of conditions was insignificant beside the deeper and sadder
misfortunes upon which the young man brooded as he rode, and which had
already embittered his young existence by the destruction of his
highest and most beautiful illusion and of his dearest and happiest
hope.
In the fall of his mother's image from the altar upon which he had set
it, there was the absolute destruction of his own past childhood as it
had always appeared to him. In the fearful illumination of her true
nature, in the broad glare of evil, the little good there might have
been had faded to nothing. It was not possible that she who had married
her husband's murderer within the month could ever have felt one
sincere impulse of love for Raymond Warde, nor that she could ever have
known the slightest real affection for the son whom she had first left
to his fate, and then treacherously cheated of his birthright. The
temple where she had been was still in his heart and mourned her in
emptiness. For nothing else had taken the place of her there; she was
not transformed, she was gone, and had taken with her a lifetime of
tender and gentle memories. When his inward eyes sought her they found
nothing, and their light was quenched in her darkness. She was not as
his father was, dead in fact, but dead in honour. There he lay, as
Gilbert had last looked upon his white face and stiff, mailed form,
himself still, himself as he had been in life and as he was thereafter,
in that place of peace and refreshment where brave men rest. In the
quiet features was reflected forever the truth whereby his life had
been lived; in the crossed hands upon the breast was the last outward
symbol and sign of the simple faith that had been life's guide; in the
strong, straight outlines of a strength splendid in death was the
record of strong deeds well done. Alive, he had been to his son the man
of all others; dead, he was still the man of men, without peer and
without like. It mattered not that he was silent, for he had spoken the
truth; that he was as motionless as a stone, for the cold hand had been
swift to thrust and smite, and had dealt unforgotten blows in a good
cause; that he was deaf, for he had heard the cry of the weak, and had
forborne; that he was blind, for his eyes had seen the light of victory
and had looked unflinching upon an honourable death. Loyal, true,
brave, strong, he lay in his son's heart, still at all points himself.
And Gilbert turned his mind's eyes to the darkness on the other side,
and many a time, as the unwept tears burned in his brain, he wished
that his mother were lying there too, beside his father, dead in the
body but alive forever to him in that which is undying in woman; to be
cherished still, still honoured; to be loved, and still obeyed in the
memory of precept and teaching; to be his mother always, and he to be
in thought her child, even until the grey years should be upon him, and
the Bridge of Fear in sight.
Instead, as his thoughts went back to his home, the woman herself faced
him, not as he had always seen her, but as she had been sometimes seen
by others. The deed she had done--the greatest, the worst, the most
irrevocable--was in her face, and Gilbert's unconscious memory brought
back the details his love of her had once rejected. The cold face was
as hard as flint, the deep blue eyes were untrue and unbelieving, the
small red lips were scornfully parted to show the cruel little teeth,
and there were dashes of flame in the russet hair. Better she had been
dead, better a thousand times that she had come to the sharp end before
her time, than that such a face should be her son's only memory of his
mother.
The lines of the image had been etched in the weak places of his heart
with the keen point of his first grief, and the biting acid of a new
and unnatural hate was eating them deeper day by day. And when, in
spite of himself, his mind dwelt upon her and understood that he was
cursing her who had borne him, he turned back in sheer despair to the
thought of a religious life.
But though it drew him and appealed to all in his nature which had been
uppermost when death had almost tripped him into his grave, it spoke
but half a language now, and was less than half convincing. He could
understand well enough that the monastery might hold the only life for
men who had fought through many failures, from light to darkness, from
happiness to sorrow--men who loved nothing, hoped nothing, hated
nothing any longer, in the great democracy of despair. They sought
peace as the only earthly good they might enjoy, and there was peace in
the cloister. Hope being dead in life, they tasted refreshment in the
hope of a life to come. The convent was good enough for the bankrupt of
love and war. But there must be another rule for those in whom youth
was wounded but not dead, whose hearts were offended but not slain,
whose blood was still strong and hot for good and evil, for men whose
battles were before them still. There must be a remedy against fate
which should not be an offence to God, a struggle against God's will
which should not be a revolt, a life in which virtue should not mean a
prison for soul and body, nor the hope of salvation a friar's cell.
Like many enthusiasts, knowing nothing of the world save by guesswork,
and full of an inborn belief in the existence of perfection, Gilbert
dreamed of realizing the harmony of two opposites--the religious life
and the life of the world. Such dreams seemed not so wild in those
days, when the very idea of knighthood was based upon them, and when
many brave and true men came near to making them seem anything but
fanciful, and practised virtue in a rough-and-ready fashion which would
not pass muster in modern society, though it might in heaven. The
religious idea had taken hold of Gilbert strongly, and before he had
left the abbey he had fallen into the habit of attending most of the
offices in the choir, still wearing the novice's frock which had been
at first but an invalid's robe. And now that he was out in the world to
seek his fortunes, tunic and hose, spur and glove, seemed strange to
him, and he would have felt more at home in a friar's hood. So he felt
that in his life he should never again quite lose the monastic
instinct, and that it was well for him that he could not. He stood on
that perilous thin ridge between past and future to which almost every
man of heart is sooner or later led by fate, where every step may mean
a fall, and where to fall is almost to be lost. The things he had lived
for, the things he had hoped, the things he had loved, had been taken
from him violently, and all at once. There was neither clue, nor guide,
nor hope, and on each side of him yawned the hideous attraction of
despair. Even the recollections of a first love were veiled by what he
understood to be the irrevocable interdiction of the Church, and, in
his strongly spiritual mood, to think of Beatrix appeared to him like a
temptation to mortal sin.
In leaving England, without any definite aim, but with a vague
intention of making his way to Jerusalem, he had obeyed the Abbot of
Sheering rather than followed friendly advice, and his obedience had
savoured strongly of the monastic rule. Lambert de Clare, a man of the
world before he had become a churchman, and a man of heart before he
was a ruler of monks, had understood Gilbert's state well enough, and
had forced the best remedy upon him. The cure for a broken heart, if
there be any, is not in solitude and prayer, but in facing the wounds
and stings of the world's life; and the abbot had almost forcibly
thrust his young friend out to live like other men of his order, while
suggesting a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a means of satisfying his
religious cravings. As for the material help which Gilbert had
received, it was no shame, in an age not sordid, for a penniless
gentleman to accept both gifts and money from a rich and powerful
person like the Abbot of Sheering, in the certainty of carving out such
fortune with his own hands as should enable him amply to repay the
loan. So far as his immediate destination was concerned, the abbot, who
considered his house to be vastly superior to political dissension, and
secretly laughed at his cousins for supporting King Stephen's upstart
cause, had advised Gilbert to make his way directly to the court of
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, and Grand Seneschal of France,
the husband of the Empress Maud, rightful Queen of England. Thither he
was riding, therefore, with Dunstan on his left hand, mounted upon his
second horse, while Alric, the sturdy little Saxon groom and archer,
rode behind them on a stout mule laden with Gilbert's possessions.