A sudden madness whirled Gorlois away. He went red from the neck,
clutched at Igraine's wrist and held it. For a moment they stood rigid.
The girl could not shake him off although he had but one hand to hold
her. His breath was hot upon her face as he pressed her back against
the wall, and held her there till his lips touched her neck. Igraine,
breathing fast and straining from him with all her strength, set a
hand on his face and thrust him away. She twisted her wrist free,
and slipped from between him and the wall. Then the door opened, and
Radamanth stood by them.
Igraine slipped away with a white face, and running above to her
chamber threw herself down on the bed, and cried for Pelleas. She heard
Gorlois stride through the house, heard the gate crash as he went out
into the street. Shame and loneliness were on her like despair, and
she was weak and shaken after her anger, and very hungry for love and
comfort. The world seemed a dull blank about her, cold, irresponsive,
and grey as a November evening. Every hand seemed against her. Even
Radamanth, the man of serious years, had turned the key upon her, more
kind to Gorlois than herself. Her thoughts were very bitter as she lay
and brooded over it all.
Presently she heard some one coming up the stairs. Darting to the door,
she bolted it, and went back to the bed, while a hand rapped out a
somewhat diffident summons, and Radamanth's voice came in to her.
"My dear niece," it said.
Igraine made no answer.
"My dear niece, let me have a word with you."
Still no answer. Radamanth tried the door and found it fastened.
"Gorlois is gone," he said.
Igraine remained obdurate, with face drawn and sullen-eyed. She heard
him shuffle down the stairs again, go into his parlour, and shut the
door very gently, like a man who is ashamed. Then all was quiet save
for casual footsteps in the street, and the garrulous chatter of a
starling on the tiles.
Noon had come and gone a long while, and still Igraine lay in her room
and moped. She felt sore and grieved to the heart, all her sanguine
courage was at low ebb. Winchester seemed a prison-house where she was
shut up with Gorlois. The man's greed and power of soul seemed to stare
upon her till white honour folded its hands over its breast and turned
to flee. Oh for Pelleas and the brave look of those honest eyes, the
staunch touch of those great hands. He seemed to stand up above the
world, above the selfishness, the lust, the violence, like a pine on
some lonely hill. She could trust, she could believe. To find him would
give her peace.
As she lay there that noontide a new purpose came to her, and lighted
up hope. It was frail and flickering enough, but still, it burned. She
would leave Radamanth's house and go afoot into the world to find a
shadow. Anything was better than lying cooped in the place for dread of
Gorlois. She had long contemplated such a measure, and that morning in
Radamanth's garden gave her decision and made her strong.
She rose up from the bed and hunted out her old Avangel habit from a
cupboard in the wall. Then she set to to doff the rich stuffs Radamanth
had given her, the embroidered tunic, the coloured leather shoes,
the goodly enamelled girdle. In their stead she stood again in the
old grey gown, hood, and sandals, with a little thrill of delicious
recollection. It was like stepping back into the dream of an enchanted
past.
She had hardly ended the transformation when there came a shy tap at
her door, and a mild voice calling to her from the landing. It was the
girl Lilith. Igraine felt a sudden warmth at her heart as she let her
in and barred the door again. Lilith stood and stared at her, her great
brown eyes wide with astonishment.
"Why this old dress, Igraine?"
"I will tell you, dear."
"And you have been crying, for your eyes are red."
Igraine took the soft-voiced little woman to the window-seat and told
her sadly enough all the doings of the morning. Even Lilith looked
ashamed and showed her anger openly. Radamanth had confessed nothing of
what had passed in the garden.
"I never loved my father less before," she said. "I should never have
thought this mean trick of him. I am ashamed, Igraine."
"Never trouble, dear, you are my joy in Winchester."
"And why this old nun's habit?"
"I am going to leave you, child."
Lilith clutched at her with both hands, her face suddenly white and
almost piteous.
"Oh, no, no, Igraine!"
"I must, dear."
"Forgive--"
"It is not that alone. I cannot rest here longer. Gorlois and the city
have crushed the heart out of me."
Lilith lifted up her child's face to her, and then began to sob
unrestrained on Igraine's bosom.
"It seems cruel," she whimpered.
"No, no, it is best for me after all."
"But where will you go, Igraine?"
"Heaven knows, dear. I cannot rest here longer after this morning. I
feel as if I should stifle."
"Don't go, Igraine."
"Hush, dear, don't weaken me. I am hard put as it is."
They were both weeping now. Lilith's slim body shook as she lifted up
her face to Igraine's, and looked at her through her tears. She had
learnt to love Igraine, and jealousy of her tall and splendid kinswoman
had had no place in her heart. Lilith possessed to perfection the power
of sympathy, and being a simple little soul who lived wholly for the
present, she perhaps felt the more for that very reason. She could not
say evil enough of Gorlois, nor put too much kindness into her kisses
as she sat with her head on Igraine's shoulder.
"You cannot go out alone in the world," she said presently.
Igraine was silent.
"I know father would never forgive himself."
"There are convents, child. They would guard and give me harbour for a
time."
"A convent--but you hate the life."
"If I could only hear of Uther, I would--"
"Yes, yes, I know. But will you go, Igraine?"
"My mind is made up; nothing can change it."
"Then let me come with you."
Igraine kissed her, but shook her head at the suggestion.
"I love you for the wish, dear, but I could never drag you into my own
troubles, and it would be very wrong to Radamanth."
That afternoon they had many words together in Igraine's room, and
dusk caught them still talking. Igraine had made Lilith promise that
Radamanth should know nothing of her flight till the following morning.
Lilith proved a little obstinate at first, but yielded in the end
for fear of grieving Igraine. With the dusk she crept downstairs and
brought up food. Igraine made a meal, while Lilith, with her tears
still falling, put up food and a few trifles into a bundle, slipping in
all the little store of money she had. Then she ran softly downstairs
to see if the way were clear. Radamanth had gone to supper with a
merchant friend, and the house seemed quiet and very lonely. In the
passage-way the two girls took leave of each other, Lilith clinging to
Igraine for a moment with all her heart. With sad eyes Igraine left
her, and went out into the night.
VI
Igraine found lodging that night in the great abbey of St. Helena that
Pelleas had spoken of on their ride from the island manor. Posing
to the portress as one who had wandered long after her escape from
Avangel, she was taken to the refectory, where supper was being spread
by the juniors. The women of the place gathered round her, and Igraine
inquired with some qualms for any chance news of Malt, Claudia, and
the rest, but getting nothing she felt more confident. She told them
her name was Melibœa, and she recounted at length the burning of
Avangel and her subsequent wanderings, carefully purging the tale of
all that might seem strange to their virgin ears, or set their tongues
a-clacking. The women were very kind to her, partly for her own sake,
and partly for the interesting gossip she had brought them.
At supper she sat next a young and merry nun who shared her misericords
with her. The good women of the place were suffered to talk between
vespers and complines, and Igraine, sly at heart, edged the talk to a
tone for which she thirsted, and began to speak to her neighbours of
Gratia, Abbess of Avangel.
"Did any of you know her?" she asked.
"Only by fame," said a fat nun opposite Igraine.
"I have heard she was near of kin to the King," said another, who
drooped her lids in very modest fashion.
Igraine started in thought.
"Aurelius?" she said.
The nun nodded.
"How were they related?"
"I have heard Gratia was his aunt."
"And aunt to Uther also?"
"Of course, seeing they are brothers."
Igraine looked at her wooden platter, and pressed the little gold cross
to her bosom with her hand. And now a strange thing happened. The old
nun opposite Igraine, who was the Mistress of the Novices, brought out
news that she had heard in the Abbess's parlour that very morning.
"Uther has been seen again," she said.
"Uther?"
The word snapped out like a bolt from a bow, and brought the nuns' eyes
on Igraine across the table.
"The man comes and goes like a shadow. He is ever riding alone to do
some great deed against the beasts, or against the heathen. A great
soul is Uther."
Here were tidings dropped like dew out of heaven at the very hour she
stood in need of them. Igraine felt the mist lighten appreciably in her
brain. She popped an olive into her mouth and spoke almost carelessly.
"Where is Uther?"
"At Sarum town. He rode, they say, to the great camp there looking like
a ghost, or as though he had been playing Simeon on a pillar."
Igraine merely nodded.
"Uther always looks a serious soul. Have you ever seen him, sister?"
"Never. A dark man?"
"With a face like a sun and a thunder-cloud rolled into one."
"A good man!"
"So they say; he has a clean look."
A little bell began to sound to call them away to complines. Igraine
went with the rest into the solemn chapel, and let the chant sweep into
her soul, and the prayers take her heart to heaven. Incense floated
down, colours shone and glimmered on the walls, the dim lamps shivered
like stars under the roof. Igraine felt her hollow heart warm as a rose
in the full blaze of a golden noon. She said her prayers very fervently
that night, for love was awake in her and glad of her new-blossomed
hope. She would go to the great camp at Sarum and see this Uther for
herself.
She had little comradeship with sleep in the great dormitory that
night. When the matins bell rang she was up and ready for her flight
like a young lark in the day. After chapel she begged a pittance from
the cellaress and stowed it with her bundle in the little wallet Lilith
had given her, excusing her early going on the plea that she had far to
walk that day. She set out briskly from the grey shadows of the abbey.
The place lay quite close by the western gate, so that she was soon
beyond the walls and in the fields and orchards where all was goldly
quiet at that early hour.
Winchester stood like a prison-house, void and fooled, in the east.
Igraine turned and looked down at it awhile huddled in its great girdle
of stone, a medley of towers, roofs, and mist-wrapped trees. She shook
her fist at it with a noiseless little laugh when she thought of
Gorlois. Further yet to the east she could see the blue pine-smirched
ridge where Pelleas had built her that little bower on the night he
had left her sleeping. Her eyes grew deep with desire as she thought
of it all, even as she had thought of it a thousand times since then.
Pelleas's dark face was garlanded with green in her memory, and
trouble, as it ever does, had made love take deeper root in her bosom.
Cheeriness comes with action. Igraine, fettered no longer, footed it
along the road with snatches of song on her lips, and her eyes full of
summer. A quiet wind came up from the west, and the clear morning air
suited her courage. All the wide world seemed singing; the trees had
an epithalamium on their whispering tongues, and the sky seemed strewn
with white garlands. The tall corn in its occasional cohorts bowed down
to her with murmuring acclaim as though it guessed her secret.
When she had gone a league or so she sat down under a tree and made a
meal from the stuff in her wallet. Country folk went by on the road,
for it was market-day in Winchester. One apple-cheeked lad seeing a nun
sitting there came devoutly with his palms full of fruit taken from his
ass's pannier, and made his offering with a shy smile and a bend of the
knee. Igraine, touched, blessed him most piously, and gave him a kiss
to cap it. The lad blushed and went away thinking he had never seen
such a pretty nun before, and wondering if there were many like her in
the great abbey. Igraine watched him towards Winchester, and wished
some country girl joy of a good husband.
Presently she held on again in great spirits, nor had she gone very far
when a tinkling of bells came up behind her with a merry clatter of
hoofs. Turning aside to give passage, she looked back and saw an old
gentleman riding comfortably on a white mule with two servants jogging
along behind him on cobs. The old man's bridle was fringed with
little silver bells that made a thin jingle as he rode; he was solidly
gowned in plum-coloured cloth turned over with sable, and seemed of
comfortable degree, judging by his trappings. Igraine looked up in his
face as he passed by, while the old gentleman stared down to see what
sort of womanhood lurked under a nun's hood. The man on the mule was
Eudol, Radamanth's bosom gossip.
"Hey now, on my soul," said the little merchant, reining in with
a will; "what have we here, my dear, gadding about nunwise on a
high-road? My faith, I must hold a catechism."
Igraine, knowing the old man's vulnerability, answered with a smile.
"Ah, Master Eudol, you are a very lady's man, a gem of discretion."
"So, and truth," said the merchant, with a chuckle.
Igraine went close to him and patted the white mule's neck, while the
serving men held at a wise distance.
"I am running away from Winchester," she said.
"Strange sport, my dear."
"Now you must not tell a soul, on your honour."
"Not a living soul, on my honour."
Igraine let her eyes flit a laughing look up at him.
"Why then, Master Eudol," she said, "if you will order one of your men
to walk, I will get up and ride along with you for a league or two.
There is trust for you."
Eudol appeared entranced with the suggestion. He ordered one of his
fellows to dismount, to spread a cloak over the saddle, to shorten a
stirrup leather and give Igraine his knee. The girl was soon mounted,
seated side fashion with one sandalled foot in the stirrup and one hand
on the pommel to steady her. She flanked Eudol's white mule, and they
rode on side by side at a level tramp, with the henchmen some twenty
paces in the rear.
Eudol soon waxed fatherly, as was his custom. He twitted Igraine on the
temerity of her venture with the senile and pedantic jocosity of an
old man. He said things that would have been impertinent on the tongue
of a youngster, and exerted to the full that eccentric fad of age, the
supposition that youth needs pleasant patronage and nothing more. Old
men, holding young folk to be fools, reserve to their rusty brains the
privilege of seeming wise. They are content to straddle the crawling,
leather-jointed circumspection that they call knowledge. The bird
flutters to his mate, sings, soars, and is taken before night by the
fowler. The snail creeps his rheumy round covered with the slime and
slobber of prudence, to rot in the end under a tree-stump, unless some
good throstle cracks him prematurely on a stone. Eudol had something of
the snail about him, but he assayed none the less to ape the soaring
of youth with a very ragged pair of wings. That morning he flew with a
senile eagerness for Igraine's favour, and thought himself a match for
any young man in the matter of light chivalry.
"Come now, my dear," he said, "let us have a good look at you."
"Well, sir?"
"My word, you make a gorgeous nun. Who ever saw such eyes under a hood
before! My dear, you are quite foolhardy to go pilgrimaging alone; men
are such rogues, and you have such a pretty face."
There was a cringing tone about the old sinner that made Igraine
thoroughly despise him. He seemed to combine elderly bravado with
smooth servility, qualities peculiarly obnoxious to the girl's spirit.
She had never liked or trusted Eudol overmuch in the past, but she
was at pains to be civil to him now, seeing that he might serve her
in sundry ways. She took his speeches with outward graciousness, and
laughed at him hugely in her heart.
He began to lecture her in rather egotistical fashion.
"You must remember, my dear," he said, "that I am a man of the world,
and one whose experience may be relied upon. I may tell you that my
judgment is much valued by your good uncle Radamanth, a man of much
sagacity, but yet one who lacks just that subtle insight into events
that I may say has always been my special characteristic. I am so
experienced that I may deserve the infinite honour of advising you if
you care to tell me where you are going. I have had so much to do with
the world, that I can tell you the best tavern in any town this side
of the Thames where clean and honest lodging may be had. I can inform
you as to tolls, prices, customs, bye-laws. Are you soon returning to
Winchester?"
Igraine shook her head at him.
"Who have you been quarrelling with, my dear?"
"Myself most."
"To think of it, syrup quarrelling with honey! What will your Lord
Gorlois do?"
Igraine stifled the question on the instant.
"Master Eudol, leave that name alone if you want more of my company."
"Pardon, my dear, pardon. I did not know it was so unpleasant a topic."
"I hate the very name of him."
"My dear, such a splendid fellow."
"Detestable boaster."
"Tut, tut,--a very popular nobleman; just the very man for you, and
vastly rich. Now when I heard that he--that gentleman--"
"For God's sake, Master Eudol, leave your chatter."
The old merchant for the moment looked a little taken aback. Then he
smiled, pulled his goat's beard, and grew epigrammatic.
"She who wears a gilded shoe," he said, "will find it pinch in the
wearing. Stick to your sandals, my dear, and let your pretty white feet
go brown in the sun. Better breathe in the open than freeze in a marble
house. Just play the savage and let ambition go hang."
Igraine thanked him as though she held his counsel to be of the most
inestimable value to herself. She was wise enough to know that to
please an old man you must take his words in desperate earnest, and
appear much caught by his supreme sagacity. Eudol smacked his lips and
was comfortably warm within himself. He went on to tell the girl that
he was riding to a little country manor that he owned some few leagues
from Winchester. He informed her sentimentally that he was a very
Virgil over his farm and garden. Igraine thought "Virgil" might well be
Greek for "fool," but she hid her ignorance under her hood. Eudol ran
on to dilate on the subtleties of husbandry, making a fine parade of
expert phraseology in the doing of it.
"I see you do not follow me," he said presently. "Young folk are not
fond of turning over the sods; they love grass for a scamper, not clay
and dull loam. Shall we talk of petticoats or sarcenet that runs down a
pretty figure like water? Eh, my dear? You set the tune, I'll follow."
Igraine contented herself with keeping him to his hobby.
"My father loved his violet beds," she said.
"Wise man--wise man. A garden makes thoughts sprout as though they
would keep time to the leaves. You shall see my garden. Let me see,
what road are you for following?"
"The road to fortune, Master Eudol."
"Truth, then, it must run near my doorway. The good woman who keeps
house for me will make you most welcome. You must rest on your journey."
"You are very good."
"Not a bit of it, my dear. I shall call you St. Igraine--hee, hee!--and
you will ripen all the apples in my orchard by looking at 'em. Faith,
am I not a wag?"
"You ought to be at court, sir."
"Hee, hee!"
"You would make all the young squires red with envy."
"My dear, my dear!"
"Truth."
"To flatter an old man so--"
"But you are really such a courtier."
Eudol squirmed and chuckled in the grotesquest fashion.
"Assuredly we make very good friends," he said.
Eudol's manor nearly halved the mileage between Sarum and the royal
town of Winchester, and Igraine found his suggestion quite a happy help
to her plans. If needs be, she could bide the night there and make
Sarum next day with but trivial trouble. She was glad in a way that
she had fallen in with Eudol, for the ride had proved quite a charity
to her, and his antique vanities had passed the time better than more
modest characteristics could have done. Her only fear was lest he
should cheat her, and send word to Radamanth. Accordingly she spoke to
him again about her flight, and made him promise on the Cross that he
would not betray her whereabouts. Eudol, silly soul, was ready enough
by now to promise her almost anything.
About noon they halted and made a meal, with a flat stone lying under
the shade of a tree for table. Eudol drank quite enough wine to quicken
his failings, and to lull what common sense he had to sleep. He became
so maudlin, so supremely sentimental, that Igraine had much ado to
throttle her laughter. She quite feared for him when they had to get
to horse again. His men had to hoist him into the saddle between them.
Once there he seemed quite arrogantly confident of his seat, and being
a hardy old gentleman at the pot he soon steadied down into comparative
docility, managing his mule as though there had been no such luxury as
dinner. He was more garrulous and fatherly than ever; now and again he
had to quench a hiccough; otherwise he was only an exaggerated portrait
of himself.
An hour's ride brought them to Eudol's own pastures. He pointed out his
sheep to Igraine amid the clanking of their diverse bells, and told her
the profits of the last shearing. Soon the house edged into view, a
homely place set back an arrow's flight from the road, and ringed round
with a score or so old trees. It was a green and quiet spot, mellow
with the warm comfort of pastureland and wood. A pool twinkled in the
meadows, through which ran a small stream.
There was no bridge over the brook; the track crossed it by a shallow
ford where the water gurgled over pebbles. The banks were loose and
crumbling, and the trackway littered with stones. Eudol's mule went
over sure-footed as a goat, but Igraine's horse, slipping on the slope,
set a fore-hoof on a shifting stone, and rolled down with a crash. The
girl did not avoid in time, and the brute's body pinned her ankle. She
felt the sinews crack, and the stones bruise her flesh. For a moment
she was in danger of the animal's plunges to rise, but one of the men
came up and seized the bridle, while his fellow drew Igraine clear.
Eudol climbed down, splashed through the water, and came up puffing
sympathy. Igraine tried to walk, but gave up with a wry face. The men
helped her to the grass bank, where she sat down, with Eudol fussing
round her like an old woman. He sent the men on to the manor to bring
a bed; and seeing that Igraine had grown white from the wrench, he ran
for the wine-flask at his saddle-bow and urged her to drink. The girl
had more fear of a spoilt journey than a cracked bone, and feeling
faint for the moment, she suffered Eudol, and took the wine. The old
man was on his knees by her stroking her hand, his thin beard wagging,
and his glazed eyes vinously sympathetic. When the men came back with
the bed they laid Igraine thereon, and bore her through the meadows to
the house, Eudol following like a spaniel at their heels.
VII
While Igraine slept in the abbey dormitory and dreamt of Pelleas, the
man Gorlois burnt on the grid of his own passions, and found no peace
for his soul.
The night sky was not a whit more black than his spirit, and his
sinister cogitations were chequered ever with palpitating points of
fire. The restless fever of an unfed leopard seemed his, and he was
in and out of his tumbled, sleepless bed ten times before dawn. Only
a boar-hound kept him company, a savage red-eyed brute whose temper
suited that of his master; the dog followed Gorlois as he wandered from
bed-chamber to atrium, out from the peristyles to the garden, down
walks of yew and cypress, between the beds of helicryse and asphodel,
over the smooth lawns clear in the eye of the moon. There was an evil
thing in Gorlois's thought, a thing fit for beggarly disrelish, yet
very white and lovely to look upon. He stalked like a ghost in the
night, biting his lips, looking into the dark with red and eager eyes.
How often he reached out in naked thought and clasped only the air. He
cursed himself and the woman, honoured and abused her in one breath,
grew hot and cold like a live coal played upon by a fickle wind.
As soon as dawn came he had a plunge and a swim in a pool in the
garden, and having suffered the ceremony of a state toilet, went out
unattended into the town. It was the very hour when Igraine was shaking
her fist at Winchester for thought of him, but Gorlois was spared the
prick of self-knowledge and the frank truth of the girl's distaste. He
thought her nothing more than a shrew, and the possessor of a splendid
temper. His long legs and the heat at his heart soon took him down
through the quiet streets and the market square to Radamanth's house.
Early as was the hour, the goldsmith had escaped sloth and was busy at
his ledgers in his little counting-house behind the parlour. Gorlois
came in in great state, with the serving wench who announced him
feasting her curiosity on his face with a sheepish giggle. Radamanth,
fetched from his figures, bowed very low, and made the gentleman a
most obsequious welcome. He was wondering what Gorlois's humour might
be after the repulse of yesterday. To tell the truth, Radamanth felt
somewhat ashamed of the trick he had served Igraine, and he was none
too eager to meet his niece, seeing that she still seemed determined to
hide her anger in her room. His doubts as to Gorlois's mood were set at
rest by that gentleman's somewhat saturnine opening.
"Radamanth!"
"Your honour's servant."
"I have come to make peace."
"Your lordship's magnanimity is phenomenal."
"Was I over hasty, goldsmith?"
"A young man's way, my lord; no fault at all. Many's the time I had my
face smacked as a youngster, and was none the worse in favour. Take no
serious view, sir, but press her the harder. She'll give in--my faith,
yes, being young and full of bone. You are troubled, my lord, with too
much conscience."
"Have you seen the woman since?"
Radamanth raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
"Well, no," he said. "I am afraid my niece has rather a hot
spirit--breeding, my lord--proud blood in her."
"I know that part of her nobleness well enough."
Radamanth refrained a moment from a sense of discretion.
"My lord would see her?"
"I'll not budge till I have done so."
"You understand women?"
Gorlois smiled a peculiar smile.
"I have wit enough," he said. "I have my plan."
"If it please you, sir, to go into the garden, I will endeavour to send
her to you."
"No more locking of doors, goldsmith."
"Sir, I contemn my late indiscretion in your service."
Gorlois passed out by a long passage into the gardens, with its green
leaves shelving to the river, while Radamanth, half a coward at heart,
went towards the stair that led to Igraine's chamber. Halfway up he
met the girl Lilith coming down, very white and frightened looking, as
though she dreaded her father's face. Radamanth kissed her, and asked
for Igraine. Then her distraught look dawned on him in the twilight of
the stairway, and made him suddenly suspicious.
"Is Igraine awake?"
Lilith hid her face in his sleeve.
"Speak, girl, what's amiss?"
"The room is empty."
"What!"
"Igraine has left us," said the girl with a stifled whimper.
Radamanth, sage and solemn soul, lapsed into the sin of blasphemy.
"When did you learn this, girl?"
"Father--"
"Quick now, don't lie."
He shook her by the shoulder.
"Father, be gentle with me."
"Quick, hussy."
"I can't, I can't."
Radamanth took her firmly by the wrist and brought her with no very
considerate care into the parlour.
"Now," he said, thrusting her into a chair, "you atom of ingratitude,
tell me what you know."
Lilith began to sob. She hid her face behind her fingers and dared not
look at Radamanth. The goldsmith chafed and paced the room, hectoring
her.
"Don't think to fool me," he said; "you know more yet; you would have
answered before if there had been any truth in you."
Radamanth's harshness seemed certainly to calm the girl, and to conjure
up some passing antagonism in her heart.
"The blame is yours, father."
"Impertinent child."
"Igraine was angry with you."
"Well, have I not treated her like a daughter?"
"She fled away last night."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"You do."
"I don't, father; 'tis truth."
The girl's brown eyes appealed to him tearfully; she was honest enough,
and Radamanth knew it. He took her sincerity for granted and proceeded
to question her further.
"How was she clothed, child?"
Lilith looked at the floor and plucked at her gown with her fingers.
"Do you hear me?"
"Yes, father."
"Then answer at once."
"I can't."
"Upon my soul--"
"Igraine made me promise."
Radamanth lost his temper again and began to bluster like a March wind.
Lilith's cheeks were wet with her tears; they ran down and dropped into
her lap like little crystals. She shook and sobbed in her chair, but
answered not a word, a martyr to her promises. Then Radamanth, man of
money-bags and craft, found something wherewith to loose her tongue.
"Listen," he said; "a certain lad never enters this house again, and
you never again have speech with him, unless you answer me this at
once."
The mean measure triumphed. Lilith's tears never ceased, but she gave
way at last, and hating herself, told Radamanth what he wanted. Then he
left her there to whimper by herself, and went into the garden to speak
with Gorlois.
The Count of Cornwall guessed from the merchant's face that matters had
fallen out ill for him somewhere. He forestalled Radamanth's confession
with an impatient gust of words.
"She is still in a deuce of a temper?"
"My lord, it is otherwise."
"Then why so glum--man, have I not uncovered ingots of gold for you if
I wed?"
Radamanth held his hands up like a priest giving a blessing. Any one
might have thought him grieved to death by the ingratitude of his
niece's desertion. The goldsmith dealt in coarser sentiment.
"My lord, the girl has forsaken my house and fled."
Gorlois had half expected some such news. He said nothing, but merely
stared at Radamanth with dark masterful eyes, while his fingers played
with the tassels of his belt. His heart was already away over moor and
dale chasing the gleam of a golden head of hair.
"When did you miss her, goldsmith?"
"She crept away at dusk yesterday."
"Whither?"
"Heaven knows, my lord."
"How dressed?"
"As a grey nun."
"Has she gone back to the Church?"
"She did not love such a life, my lord."
"By God, no."
Gorlois frowned a moment in thought. The scent of the girl's dress was
still in his nostrils, and her eyes haunted him. Then he turned past
Radamanth to go, hitching up his sword belt, a significant habit he had
learnt long ago.
"I shall find her," he said.
"Good, my lord."
"I have your countenance."
"Be kind to the girl, sir."
"I could go to hell for her."
"My lord, why not try heaven?"
"A good jest."
"Men always go to hell for things," said the goldsmith.
There was life and stir enough in Gorlois's great house when its master
came back that morning. Gorlois's orders were like a torch to tinder.
Men went to every wind, some to the gates, some to the market, others
to the religious houses and the inns, all bent on striking the trail of
a nun's grey gown. The men knew their master's mood, and the measure of
his pulse on such occasions. Gorlois bided quiet in his garden, more
like a leopard than a lover. He had made up his mind to catch Igraine,
and to win mastery of her, hook or by crook, since she chose to play
the shrew and mar his wooing. It was not likely that one of the first
men in Britain should be baffled by the temper of a goldsmith's niece.
About noon a certain slave who had gone out to net news came back with
much elation and claimed his lord's ear. Brought in before Gorlois, he
told how he had talked with a boy selling fruit in the market-place,
and how the boy, when questioned, had told him of a nun he had seen
sitting under a tree by the road to Sarum that very morning. The lad
had described her as a very beautiful lady with large eyes, and a cloud
of red-brown hair, and that she wore a grey nun's habit somewhat torn
and travel-stained. Gorlois thought he recognised Igraine, and gave the
slave fifty acres and his freedom on the instant. Waiting for further
news, word was brought him that a grey nun had been marked by the guard
going out of the western gate not very long after dawn. Later still
Gorlois heard of such a nun, calling herself Melibœa, having lodged the
night at the great abbey of St. Helena.
Gorlois held himself in leash no longer. He buckled on his richly gilt
armour, and his great white horse was saddled and brought into the
court. Not a knight would he have at his back, neither groom nor page.
Getting to horse in the full welt of the afternoon sun, he rode out
of Winchester alone by the western gate, watched of many people. Once
clear of the town he pricked incontinently for Sarum, lusting much to
catch Igraine upon the way.
About that very same hour Eudol was exerting himself in Igraine's
service in the manor farm in the meadows.
The men had carried her up from the ford and set her at her own seeking
in a shady place in the garden where she might lie at peace. It was
a pleasant nook enough where they had set her bed, a patch of bright
green grass with a bank of flowers on one hand and dense laurel hedge
hiding it from the track to the house on the other. A vine trained upon
poles raised a pleasant pavilion there. Autumn would soon be whispering
in the woods, and already some few leaves were ribbed with gold and
maroon.
Eudol played the physician and made a very critical examination of her
ankle. He prided himself, among his other vanities, on having studied
Galen, and since the healing craft is often a matter of phenomenal
words and wise nothings, Eudol might have outphysicked Gildas at his
own game. The art of medicine is the art of hypocrisy, and the sage
apothecary is often a broken reed trembling in the wind of ignorance.
Eudol, having no reputation at stake, pronounced Igraine's hurt to be
a mere strain of the ankle-joint, and, as it happened, he was right.
He swathed her foot in wet linen and set it on a pillow, while the
woman who kept house for him, a red-cheeked piece of buxomness, brought
wine and food-stuff on a tray. Seeing a nun's habit the good woman was
comforted, and indulged Igraine with many smiles and much motherly care.
Eudol came and sat beside her with a great book on his knee, Virgil's
Bucolics, as he told her, and writ most learnedly for the edification
of the wise. Eudol read very little of the book that afternoon. The
volume abode with him for effect, but he preferred rather to dwell upon
the more Ovidian interest of the girl beside him, and to talk to her
in his familiar and fatherly fashion. He made many sly attempts to get
the purpose of her pilgrimage from her, but Igraine had enough wit to
keep him discreetly mystified on the subject. She was wondering all the
while how long her strained ankle would keep her to her bed.
Eudol smothered her with offers of hospitality.
"On my word you shall not be dull," he said, "though there is only an
old man to entertain you. One day you shall ride out in a litter to my
vineyards, another you shall be carried out a-hunting. I have a little
wench here who can harp and sing like a mermaid. By the poets, I can
make you quite a merry time."
Igraine made the best smile she could, and thanked him.
"You must not put yourself out for me."
"Nonsense."
"You are very good."
Eudol shook his finger with most earnest expression.
"My dear lady, it is duty, duty," he said.
They had not been so very long in the garden when Igraine's quick
ear caught the sharp and rhythmic smite of hoofs on the stony track
across the meadows. The sound disquieted her, for she was in the mood
for dreads and suspicions. Listening to make sure that the sound
approached, she appealed to Eudol and asked him to look and see who
rode for the manor. There was a little wicket-gate some way down the
laurel hedge carefully screened by shrubs. Eudol went to it, and
scanned the meadows under his hand. He came back somewhat flustered to
Igraine, and told her that a knight in gilded armour mounted on a white
horse was riding up the track to the house.
Igraine started up on her bed with her eyes very big and suspicious.
"It is Gorlois," she said.
"Heavens, my dear!"
"You have not been lying to me?"
"On my soul--no."
Igraine touched her forehead with her hand, and looked askance at the
sun.
"Master Eudol, if you would serve me, go and fool the man--send him
away."
"My dear child--"
"He must not see the servants or have speech with them."
"But--"
"I command you, go and speak to him; he is very near."
Eudol looked at her with his lower lip a-droop. His grey-green eyes met
Igraine's, gleamed, and faltered. He bent over the bed.
"I will do my best. Give me a kiss, my dear. By Augustus, I will get
rid of Gorlois if I can."
He went out quickly by the wicket-gate, and closing it after him,
waited for the knight to approach. There were no slaves about, and
Eudol remembered with confidence that his men were in the corn fields,
well away to the north. Gorlois came up with the splendid arrogance
that so suited him, his rich armour glowing above the white flanks of
his horse, his spear balanced on his thigh. Eudol went forward some
paces to meet him, as though to learn his business. Igraine, listening
behind the laurel hedge, heard their words as plainly as though the two
men were but three paces away.
"Greeting, sir," said Eudol's thin voice.
Then she heard Gorlois's clear sharp tenor questioning him. She heard
him ask whether a grey nun had called for food, or whether Eudol had
seen or heard of such a person. She heard the old man's meandering
negative, and Gorlois's retort that a grey nun had been seen riding
beside a merchant on a white mule. Igraine's heart seemed to race and
thunder. Eudol, rising to the event, suggested that the merchant might
be a certain fabulous person from Aquæ Sulis; a man of means, he said,
who often came by Sarum to Winchester in the fur trade. He hinted that
the knight might overtake them on the road, or discover them at Sarum
that evening. Gorlois fell to the suggestion. Igraine heard him inquire
further of Eudol, speak to his horse, and ride away with a ringing
clatter. She sat on her couch behind her laurel rampart and laughed.
Eudol came back to her, pleased as possible.
"How was that done,--sweeting?"
"Nobly," laughed Igraine.
"The Virgin pardon me; what perjury for a pair of lips."
VIII
Nothing is more chafing to the patience than to lie abed crippled,
knowing the while that coveted hours are slipping through one's fingers
like grains of gold. To Igraine, her maimed ankle was a very thorn
in the flesh. Her thoughts were tugging to be at Sarum, and she was
in continual fear lest Radamanth or Gorlois should track her to her
temporary refuge, and attempt to mar her freedom. She was not a woman
who could take hindrance with perfect philosophy, comforting herself
with the reflection that care never yet salved unrest. She chafed at
delay, and even blamed Eudol with great unreason because he had obliged
her with a horse not proof against stumbling.
The knowledge that Gorlois rode in search of her did not tend to the
easing of her mind. She began to understand Gorlois to the full. He had
betrayed so much of himself in Radamanth's garden that her dread grew
nearly as great as her disrelish.
Eudol had made her comfortable enough in his manor, she had no need to
find fault with his hospitality. She had her own room, a little girl to
wait and sing to her, fruit and food of the best. She spent the greater
part of each day in the garden, her bed being set under the vine
leaves; two of Eudol's slaves would carry her down in the morning and
bear her back again at night, so that she should not be too venturesome
in trying her ankle. The old merchant kept his folk close on the farm
and suffered none to go to Winchester or Salisbury, for fear lest the
knowledge of Igraine's whereabouts should leak into interested channels.
The more the girl saw of Eudol the less she relished him in her heart.
The lean look of him, his little green eyes, his thin goat-like beard,
reminded her much of the picture of some old Satyr she had seen in
the frescoes on the walls of the triclinium at Winchester. He grew
more fatherly and kind to her, would smile like some old saint as he
sat and read moralities to her from the lives of some of the Fathers.
He was very fond of holding her hand and stroking it while he purred
sentiment, and made her colour to hear his nonsense. He was quite
wickedly delighted when he had fetched a blush to her face. He would
sit and chuckle and hug himself, while his little eyes glistened and
his beard shook. Igraine, though her cheeks often tingled, did her
best to suffer him, knowing well enough that she was greatly dependent
for her peace of mind upon his good-will. She would laugh, turn his
senile flatteries into jest, and assume his humour as the most vapoury
and fanciful piece of fun possible. She often hinted that Eudol must
be neglecting his farm for her sake, though her suggestions were
absolutely to no purpose, seeing that Eudol had forgotten all about
such mundane matters as harvesting or the pressing of cider.
One afternoon they had a shrewd fright, and the incident led in its
final development to Igraine's leaving the manor in the meadows. She
was in the garden with Eudol when two horsemen wearing Gorlois's livery
rode up to the gate and demanded entertainment with much froth and
bombast. They were sturdy hot-tongued rogues, quick at liquor, quicker
still at blasphemy. Eudol, much flustered, had them brought into the
house and set loose upon a wine flask while he smuggled Igraine out of
the garden. There was a barn standing on the other side of a little
meadow near the house, and the building was screened by a fringe of
pines and a thorn hedge. Eudol hurried Igraine to the barn, saw her
couched on a pile of hay, closed the door on her, and scampered back to
take great care of Gorlois's gentlemen.
Eudol proved a most obsequious and attentive host. He kept the men
primed with wine, watched them like a lynx, forbade his slaves and
servants the room so that there should be no chance of gossip. The
fellows thought themselves well harboured. Eudol, hardy old tipster,
kept them going with a will, till they swore he was the best old
gentleman at his cups they had met this side of the Thames. He
out-drank, out-yarned, out-jested the pair of them. Grown very mellow
towards evening, they vowed by all the calendar that they loved him so
much they would make a night of it, and not go to bed till they were
carried. Eudol could have denied himself their great esteem, but there
was nothing for it but to humour them.
He got rid of the fellows next morning, when they went away sadly, very
glazed about the eyes, swearing they would pay him another visit at
their very earliest opportunity. Eudol, when they were out of sight,
went out to the barn and found Igraine comfortably couched there on
a mass of hay. The little maid who served her had brought her supper
on the sly the night before, and she had fared well enough in her new
quarters.
As a matter of fact Eudol had had a parting cup with the men that
morning, and had hardly outbreathed as yet the maudlin heritage gotten
the previous night. He kissed Igraine's hand, mumbled his usual
courtesies, excused his long absence with a warmth that nearly brought
him to tears. He was somewhat flushed over the cheek bones; his eyes
were bright, and his breath pregnant with the heavy scent of wine.
Igraine wiped the hand he had kissed on her gown, looked at him with
little love or gratitude, and told him that she had been trying to
walk, and that her ankle bore her passably.
Eudol, edging near, proceeded to narrate at preposterous length how
he had kept Gorlois's men employed, made them drunk as cobblers, and
packed them off innocently to Winchester that morning. He was hugely
sly over it all. He came and climbed up beside Igraine on the hay, and
pinched her arm with his lean fingers as he talked. There was a gaunt,
red, eager look about his face. It was quite twilight in the great
barn, and a mingled smell of hay and pitch-pine filled the air, while
dusty beams of light filtered through in steady streams.
Eudol's vinous and fatherly solicitude developed abruptly into an
absurd revelation of his inner self. He had hold of Igraine's arm with
one hand. Leaving go suddenly, he reached for her waist, poked his grey
beard into her face, and made a clumsy dab at her cheek. In a moment
the girl's arm had swept him backwards like an impotent bag of bones.
She saw him overbalance and roll off the haycock on to the edge of a
scythe. Without waiting for more, and with a glimpse of the old fool's
slippers still in the air, she slipped down from the hay and out of the
barn, and shutting the door, pegged the catch with a piece of wood.
Then she went laughing half resentfully towards the house, and told
Dame Phœbe that her master had gone to the fields to oversee his slaves.
The woman had taken a remarkable dislike to Igraine, being sulky-eyed
and dumb-saucy in her presence as far as she dared. The grey nun told
her that she was ending her sojourn at the farm that morning, and was
going on foot for the west. The woman's face changed as suddenly as a
spring sky. She was suave and smiling instanter, ready with queries
as to Igraine's ankle, very eager to pack her wallet with stuff from
Eudol's larder. Igraine, with an inward flush, saw how the wind blew.
She was keen to be gone before Eudol should be loosed from the barn;
even the woman's changed mood seemed a tacit insult in itself.
She was soon treading the meadows where the backs of Eudol's sheep
stood out like white boulders on the solitary stretch of green. The
country began to be as flat as a table, though there were still masses
of woodland piled on either side the great white road. Igraine kept in
among the trees with just a glimpse of the highway to keep her to her
mark. Her grey gown passed almost unperceptibly among the mould-grown
trunks as she went in the chequered light like a grey mouse through
green corn. Her ankle bore her better than she had prophesied, and
she made fair travelling at a modest pace. Later in the afternoon the
strain began to tell in measure, and her ankle ached and felt hot, as
though she had done enough. Sitting down on a fallen tree she watched
the road, and waited for some one to pass.
A charcoal burner went by with a couple of asses panniered up with a
comfortable load. Then came two soldiers and a couple of light wenches
who haunted camp and castle and lived to the minute. Next, a great wain
half ladened up with faggots came lumbering along, drawn by a pair of
sleepy horses, and driven by a peasant in a green smock and leather
breeches. Igraine took her choice, and going down from the trees, stood
by the roadside, and begged of the man a lift.
Seeing a nun looking up at him the man reined in, climbed down cap in
hand, and louted low to her. There was some clean straw spread over
the boards at the bottom of the cart. The man helped her up on to the
tail-board and raked the straw into a heap to make her a seat. Then
they lumbered on again towards Sarum.
In due course she began to talk to the man as he sat on a couple of
faggots and held the ropes. He was an honest, ignorant fellow, with a
much whiskered face that wore a perpetual look of kindly stupidity.
Igraine sought to know whether he was going as far as Sarum. The man
shook his bushy head like an amiable ogre, and told her that he was for
his lord's manor some two leagues distant, where he served as woodman
and ranger, or soldier when there was need of steel. He commended his
lord's house to her for lodging, with a solid faith in the generosity
of its board. Questioned as to other habitations, he told her of a
hermit's cell set in a little dale in the woods, a cell where wandering
folk often found harbour for the night. Igraine made up her mind to
choose the ascetic's bread and water, having had enough of the world's
welcome. Possibly in some dim and distant way she began to realise the
intense and engrained selfishness of the human heart.
The man of faggots, believing her a holy woman, soon began to relate
his domestic troubles to her with a most touching reverence. He told
her how his wife had been abed two months from her last childbirth, and
how sad and dirty his little cabin was for lack of her hands. He asked
Igraine to put the woman in her bede-role, a simple favour that she
granted readily enough. Then the fellow with some stolid pathos went
on to describe how his eldest lad, a boy of eight, had caught a fever
through sleeping in the woods after rain, and how he had fallen sick.
"I went to a good monk," said the man, "and bought holy water and a
pinch of dust from a saint's coffin. Pardy! but it cost me a year's
savings. The good father bade me pour the water on the boy's head and
shake the dust over his body. Glad I was, holy sister; I ran five miles
home to cure the lad."
"And he is well?"
The man gave a doleful whistle.
"The boy died," said he with pathetic candour, and a short catch in his
voice. "I didn't sleep two whole nights. Then I kissed my woman, mopped
her eyes, and went and told the priest."
Igraine merely nodded.
"Ah, the dear father, he told me 'twas God's will, and that the blessed
dust had drifted the lad straight to heaven, where he would be singing
next King David like any lord. So he came and buried the boy, and there
was an end on't."
Igraine for the moment felt heavy about the eyes.
"I should like to see him there in his little white stole," she said.
"Do you know, goodman, why so many children die?"
"Faith, madame, I have no learning," said the fellow with a dumb stare.
"Because the great God loves to have children laughing for love of him
in heaven."
"Is't so?"
"That is why he took your boy."
The man's face brightened with a new dignity.
"Little Rual was ever a gentle child," he said. "I must tell my woman;
it will just make her happy."
"I will pray for her health."
"God bless you, holy lady, you have a wise, kind heart."
Igraine blushed, but said nothing.
Presently the man stopped his horses, and pointed her to a little path
that led, he said, to the hermitage. He helped Igraine out of the cart,
and knelt on the road for her to give him a blessing. Igraine had
a Latin phrase or two from Avangel, and the benediction was earnest
enough in spirit, though it lacked genuine authority. Then she took
the path through trees, and left the man standing cap in hand by his
waggon. Her brief ride with him had done her heart good.
A mile's walk through unkempt pastures and straggling thickets brought
her to an open dale set beneath the shoulder of a wooded hill. On the
grass slope over against her she saw the hermitage--a grey cell of
unfaced stone standing in a garden in a grove of ancient thorns. By the
rivulet that ran half hid by undergrowth a figure in a brown cassock
was drawing water. Passing down over the water, Igraine overtook the
recluse halfway up the slope to the hermitage garden. She remarked
his bald head fringed with a mournful halo of hair, his stooping
shoulders, his ungainly weak-kneed gait. Hearing her tread behind him
he turned a tanned face to her, a face that brought forth a smile of
brotherly greeting at sight of a nun. Igraine, by way of creating good
feeling, took his water pot and carried it for him, pleading youth in
extenuation of the service.
There was a keen yet kindly sapience about the old man's big-nosed face
that caught her fancy. He was a bit of a cynic on the surface, but warm
as good earth at heart. Igraine confessed her need of a lodging for the
night, and the man retorted bluntly with the remark that the hermitage
was not his house,--but only a refuge to bury strangers in. Pointing to
a great slab of stone that stood near the little cell, he told her that
the stone had been his bed, summer and winter, these fifteen years, and
that dew, rain, frost, and snow had worked their will upon his body
and found it leather. The confession, pithily--almost humorously--put,
without a trace of rodomontade, set the girl smiling. She looked at the
man's brown buckram skin and congratulated him, embodying her flattery
in a little jest that seemed to catch the ascetic fancy. He commended
it with a patriarchal twinkle, and throwing open the door of his cell
surrendered her its shelter.
Igraine soon fathomed the shallow compass of the hermitage. It held
two pallet beds, some rude furniture and crockery, and such things as
were necessary to the old man's craft, namely a scourge, a calthrop set
on the end of an iron chain, a coat made of furze, a garland of thorn
twigs, and a pair of spiked sandals. Gardening tools were piled in a
corner. Over the doorway hung a rusty suit of harness and a red crusted
sword. Here in this narrow place the war tools of world and church were
mingled.
Igraine turned back into the hermitage garden. It was a quiet spot,
webbed with the faery tracery of flowers and flowering shrubs, golden
with helichryse, full of the mist of unshorn grass, bright with the
water of its little fish-pool, where the ferns grew thick. A low wattle
fence, climbed about by late-seasoned roses of red, shut the whole
within its rustic pale. Some of the herb beds were cut into symbols of
holy things, and a bay tree had been laboriously pruned into the rude
image of a cross. A number of doves peopled the place, flocking about
the hermit as he worked, often lighting on his hands or shoulders,
while an old hound dozed in the sun, or followed at his heels. Peace
seemed over the little refuge like a tranquil sky.
The hermit handed Igraine a hoe, as a matter of custom, and set her
to work on the weeds in a neglected corner, while he busied his hands
with pruning some of his rose trees, and removing the clay and linen
from his grafts. He was by no means the solemn, dismal soul or the
kindly simpleton Igraine might have expected. He had a keen, world-wise
air about him that made him seem a sort of Christian Diogenes, and it
was plain that he had lived much among men. The mingled austerity and
happiness of his habits, when set beside his inwardly sympathetic yet
somewhat cynic humour, gave a strong interest to his personality that
quite commanded Igraine's liking. Despite the vast responsibilities of
man, as he himself put it, he was not above having a jest at life in
general. "For," said he, as he pruned his rose bushes, "he who knows
and obeys the truth can of all men afford to be merry."
Igraine, smiling through the boughs, agreed with him from her heart.
"There are no sour faces in heaven," she said.
"Assuredly not," said the hermit almost fiercely.
"Then why such mortifications of the flesh, father?"
Looking up from his pruning, he beamed over the world.
"I am a very human rogue."
"Human!"
"Well, you see, sister, _mea culpa_, I loved the world when I was in it
like my own life, and even now if I did not gnash upon myself I should
grow frivolous at times. When I have spent a night in the rain, or
plied my scourge, it is marvellous how swiftly vain the fabrics of a
vaunting pride become. 'I am dust, I am dust,' I cry, and am sound at
heart again. I look upon bread and olives and a draught of river water
as true godsends. Having endured exceeding discomfort of the flesh, I
am as happy in the sun here among my flowers as a mortal could be."
Igraine rested on her hoe, and put her head back, while the evening
light gave her hair a rare metallic lustre.
"You believe in a life of contrasts, father?"
The old man became suddenly more serious.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I have found that by making myself
fanatically uncomfortable so many hours a day, I can attain for the
rest of it that simple, contented, and heaven-soaring mood that belongs
to the honest Christian. Man's great peril is apathy, and my customs
save me from sleepy ease. There is such a thing as living to pander
to the flesh; it is the creed of the majority. In order to enjoy a
truly spiritual end, I annihilate the appetites of the body, and _ecce
homo_,--merry, conscience whole, clean."
Igraine resumed her harrowing of reprobate green-stuff.
"I suppose your doctrine is right for yourself," she said.
An answer came back to her leisurely over the rose bush.
"To the backbone, sister. Yet I am not one who would thrust my habits
down other men's throats simply because the said habits happen to suit
my soul. All religious methods are a matter of individual experiment.
One man may feel more Christian if he drinks wine instead of water;
if so--by all the prophets--let him have his wine. I hold doctrinal
tyranny to be the greatest curse in Christendom."
Igraine agreed with him like a sister.
Soon the sun went down with a flood of gold over the trees, the little
pool put off sheeny samite for black velvet, and the doves flew up to
roost. The hermit in a genial mood went to his vesper meditations.
Igraine saw him kneel down before the great stone with his scourge and
crucifix beside him. She was still carnal enough to prefer the thin
comfort of a pallet bed in the hermitage to stone or mother earth.
When it had grown dark and very still she heard the swish of the steel
scourge, and the man's mutterings mingled with the occasional baying
of his dog. This phase of mind was, at her age, quite incomprehensible
to her. She remembered to pray that night for the peasant's wife who
had been sick in bed so long, and for the little lad who lay under the
green grass. Then she went to sleep thinking of Pelleas.
IX
Radamanth the goldsmith had not wasted the hours since his niece had
fled Winchester and his house in the dark. He was a man who did not let
an enterprise slip into the limbo of the past till he had attempted
honestly, and dishonestly, for that matter, to bring it to a successful
issue. He had set his heart on getting Igraine married to one of the
first lords in the island, and he also had skew ideas as to brimming up
his own coffers. Taking it for granted that Lilith and the girl had
not been close friends for weeks together without sharing secrets, and
being also strongly of the opinion that Igraine's perversity arose out
of some previous affair, he laid methodical siege to his daughter's
confidences, and cast a parental dyke about her that should compel her
to open every gate and alley to his scrutiny.
Lilith, amiable, but weak as milk, was soon worn into surrender by her
father's methods. He had an unfailing lash wherewith to quicken her
apprehension, in that young Mark, the armourer's son, should be barred
the house unless she bent to the parental edicts. Lilith soon brought
herself to believe that after all there could not be so much disloyalty
in telling certain of Igraine's adventures to her father. Radamanth,
bit by bit, had the whole tale of the way from Avangel to Winchester.
Seeing how often Igraine--woman-wise--had pictured her man to Lilith,
the goldsmith won a clear perception of the strange knight's person,
how he rode a black horse, wore red armour, bore a red dragon on a
green shield, and was called Pelleas. Radamanth made a careful note
of all these things, and laid the knowledge of them before Gorlois.
Various subtleties resulted from these facts--subtleties carefully
considered to catch Igraine.
To turn to Eudol. That lean old satyr had fallen gravely into error
in the conviction that he had fooled Gorlois's men so cleverly over
the wine-pot. The deceit had been deeper on the other side, and more
effectual, seeing that there had been a kirtled traitor in the manor
camp. If Eudol had been stirring just after daybreak on the morning
after the carouse, he might have caught one of Gorlois's men coming
down a little winding stair that led to a certain portion of the
house. A little earlier still he would have found the fellow with his
arm round Dame Phœbe's waist in a dark entry on the stairs. The woman
did not love Igraine, nor did she want her in the house; moreover,
Gorlois's man was young, and had fine eyes, and a most wicked tongue.
Eudol, like most diplomats, was far from being infallible when there
was a woman in the coil, and Dame Phœbe was very much a woman.
Gorlois's fellows had no sooner cleared the meadows that morning than
they were away for Winchester at a dusty rattle. It was fast going over
the clean, straight road, and the grey walls were not long in coming
into view. The pair swung through the western gate, and went straight
through the streets in a way that set the city folk staring and dodging
for the pathway. At the gate of Gorlois's house the porter had a
vexatious damping for the spirits of these fiery gentlemen. Gorlois had
ridden out. The men swore, off-saddled, and made the best of the matter
over a game of dice in the kitchen.
There was great bustle when Gorlois had heard the men's tale. They
excused their not having taken Igraine on the plea that Gorlois had
forbidden any to approach her save himself. The man was in a smiting
mood, and he swore Eudol should rue giving him the lie and sending him
a wild chase miles into the west. Getting to horse at once, and taking
the two men with some ten more spears, he rode out and held for Sarum.
There was a swirl of dust before Eudol's gate, and a sharp scattering
of shingle as Gorlois and his troop rode up. A slave, who had seen them
from the garden, and had taken them for robbers, was prevented from
closing the gate by a brisk youth wedging it with his foot. There was
a short scuffle at the tottering door. Then Gorlois and his men burst
it in, and cut down those slaves on the threshold who had tried to
close the door. The women folk were herded screeching into the kitchen,
and penned there like sheep. Out of a cupboard in an upper room they
dragged the woman Phœbe, limp with fright, and hurried the truth out of
her that Igraine had gone that very morning, and that Eudol was still
in the fields. Gorlois, believing her a liar, had the house searched,
beds overturned, cupboards torn open, every nook and cranny probed.
Then they tried the garden and the stables, with like fortune. One of
the fellows catching sight of the barn across the meadows, half-hidden
by pines, they made a circle round it, closed in, and forced the door.
A blinking, red-eyed face came up out of the shadows, its beard and
thin thatch of hair whisped with hay.
Eudol, collared with little kindness, began to wonder after his drunken
sleep who these rough folk could be. A word as to Igraine brought him
to his senses. He saw Gorlois, a dark-bearded, black-eyed man, with
a frown that he did not like the look of. He began to shake in his
slippers, to excuse himself, and to deny all knowledge of the girl
since the morning. Matters were against Eudol. Gorlois thought that
he had plucked the old man from hiding, and that he was a liar to the
bone; his shrift was short, measured out by the man's hard malice. They
struck him down at the door of his own barn, covering his grey head
with his hands, and screaming for mercy. His blood soaked the hay, and
shot black streaks into the dusty floor. Then they cast back to the
manor, and half-throttled the woman Phœbe, till Gorlois was satisfied
that he had got all the truth from her he could. In half an hour they
were at gallop again for Sarum.
Gorlois reined in cruelly more than once to fling hot questions at
the folk they passed upon the road. His horse was all sweat and foam,
and its mouth bloody with the heavy hand that played on the bridle.
Wayfarer after wayfarer looked up half in awe at the iron-faced man
towering above them in the stirrups. Their blank, irresponsive faces
chafed Gorlois's patience to the bone. Not a word did he win of Igraine
and her grey gown. Waxing sullen as granite, and very silent, he looked
neither to right nor left, but plodded on like a baffled sleuth-hound
with the rest of the pack trailing at his tail. The girl's hair seemed
tossing over the edge of the world, like a golden hue from the west,
and there was a passionate wind through the man's moody thought.
It was towards evening when Gorlois with his men--a bunch of
spears--came upon the peasant in the green smock driving his wain-load
of faggots slowly towards the setting sun. Gorlois drew up and hailed
him, and began his catechism anew. The fellow pulled in his team,
and eyeing the horseman with some caution, acknowledged curtly that
he had carried in his cart a league or more such a woman as Gorlois
had pictured. To further quick queries he proved stubborn and boorish.
Gorlois had lost his temper long ago. "Speak up, you devil's dog!"
The man looked sullen. Gorlois's sword flashed out. He spurred close
up, and held three feet of menacing steel over the peasant's head.
"Well, you be damned!" he said.
"What want you with the woman, lording?"
"Am I to argue with a clod of clay? The woman is marked for great
honour, and must be taken. Will you spoil her fortune?"
The man fingered the reins, looking hard at Gorlois with his stupidly
honest face. He guessed he was some great lord, by his harness and his
following. It was not for him to gainsay such a gentleman, especially
when he flourished a naked sword.
"I would do my best for the good nun, lording," he said.
"Then speak out."
"She promised to pray for my woman."
Gorlois gave a laugh, and scoffed at the notion.
"Let prayers be," he said; "tell me where she went."
The man told Gorlois of the hermitage in the dale where Igraine had
gone for a night's lodging. He described how the path could be found,
a mile or more nearer Winchester. Gorlois threw a gold piece into the
cart, and let the man drive on. Then he sat still on his black horse
with his sword over his shoulder, and looked into the wood with dark,
glooming eyes. For a minute he sat like a statue, staring on nothing in
keen thought. His men watched him, looking for some swift swoop from
such a pinnacle of pondering; they knew his temper. His sword shot back
into its scabbard, and he was keen as a wolf.
"Galleas of Camelford."
A man with a hooked nose and high cheek bones heeled his horse forward,
and saluted.
"Ride hard, find the hermitage, be wary, watch at a distance for sight
of the Lady Igraine. If she is at the hermitage, gallop back to Sarum
before nightfall. I shall be in Sir Accolon's house. Attend me there."
The man saluted again, turned his horse instanter, and rode hard into
the east. Gorlois, with a half smile on his lips, rode on with his
troop for Sarum.
In Sarum town there was a queer house of stone, very dark and very
saturnine. It was hid away behind high walls, and hedged so blackly
with yews and hollies that it seemed to stand in the gloom of a
perpetual twilight. After dark a sullen glow often hung above the
trees; casements would blaze blood-red light into boughs creaking and
clutching in the wind; or there would be a moony glimmer on the glass,
and belated folk passing near might hear voices or elvish music about
them as though dropped from the stars. It was the house of Merlin,--the
man of dreams,--wrapped in the gloom of immemorial yews.
That night Gorlois sat in a room hung with black velvet, where a
brazier held a dying fire, and a bowl thereon steamed up perfumes in
a heavy vapour. A man with a face of marble and eyes like an eternal
night was chaired before him, with his long, lean, restless fingers
continually touching the cloud of hair that fell blackly over his
ears. His fingers were packed with rings gemmed with all manner of
stones--jasper, sardonyx, chrysolite, emerald, ruby, and the like. His
gown was of black velvet, twined all about with serpent scrolls of
white cloth. On his breast was brooched a great diamond that blazed and
wavered back the glow from the fire.
Gorlois sat in his carved chair stiff as any image. His strenuous
soul seemed mewed up by the psychic influence of the man before him.
He spoke seldom, and then only at the other's motion--at a curious
gesture of one of those long, lean hands. The room was as silent as the
burial hall of a pyramid, and it had the air of being massed above by
stupendous depths of stone.
Presently the man in the black robe began to speak with deliberate
intent, holding his voice deep in his throat so that it sounded much
like the voice of an oracle declaring itself in the noise of a wind.
"The woman is beautiful beyond other women."
"Like a golden May."
"And true."
"As a sapphire."
"Yet will not have you."
"Not a shred of me."
The man with the rings smiled out of his impenetrable eyes, and
fingered the brooch on his breast.
"The woman has great destiny before her."
"Ah!"
"I have seen her star in the night. You dare take her fate on you?"
"Like ivy holds a tree."
"As a wife?"
Gorlois laughed.
"How else?"
"As a wife--by the church."
"Ah!"
"Or no help of my hand."
Again there was silence. A coal fell in the brazier, and seemed like
a rock down a precipice. The black eyes that stared down Gorlois were
full of light, and strangely scintillant. Gorlois listened, with his
limbs asleep and his brain in thrall, while the man spoke like a
very Michael out of a cloud. The clear glittering plot given out of
Merlin's lips came like a dream vivid to the thought of the dreamer.
If Gorlois obeyed he should have his desire, and catch Igraine to a
white marriage-bed by law and her own willing. The fire died down in
the brazier, and the bowl ceased to smoke perfumes. Gorlois saw the
man gather his black robe with his glittering fingers, and move like
a wraith round the room, to stand beckoning by the door. In another
minute Gorlois was under the stars, with the house and its yews a black
mound against the sky. Like a sleeper half wakened he took full breath
of the night air, and stretched his arms up above his head. But it was
not to sleep that he passed back through the void streets to the house
of the knight Accolon.
To return to Igraine housed for the night in the little hermitage. At
the first creep of dawn, when daffodils were thrown up against the
eastern sky, she left her pallet bed in the cell and went out into
the hermit's garden. The recluse was down at the brook drawing water,
whither the dog and the doves had followed him. Igraine passed through
the garden--spun over as it was with webs of dew. To her comfort she
found her ankle scarcely troubling her, for she had feared pain or
stiffness after the walk of yesterday. Going down the dale, she patted
the old dog's head, and picked up the pitcher as the recluse gave her
good-morning.
"You are an early soul, sister. My dog and I come down to the brook
each morning as the sun peeps over the hill."
"You are not lonely," said Igraine.
The old man tightened his girdle, looked over the solemn piers of the
woods, sniffed the air, and hailed an autumn savour.
"Not I," he said. "I have my dog and my doves, and folk often lodge
here, and I have word of the world and how the Saxons vex us. The good
people near bring me alms and pittances, or come to ask prayers for
their souls, and"--with a twinkle--"for their bodies, too."
Igraine remembered the peasant's little son.
"Was it you," she said, "who gave a peasant fellow near here a saint's
dust to scatter over a sick child?"
The old man shook his head and smiled enigmatically.
"I have no dealings in such marvels," he said.
"The boy died."
"Of course."
"They will sell your dust some day."
A keen look, cynical with beaming scorn, spread over the man's gaunt
face.
"Much good may it do them," he said; "death is monstrous flatterer of
mere clay. I may feed a rose bush with my bones; a better fate than the
cheating of superstitious women."
He made a sign with his hand, and the birds went wheeling in circles
above him. The dog crept up and thrust his snout into the old man's
palm. The garden lay above them, ripe with an autumn mellowness; yet
there was no regret though winter would soon be piping, and the man's
hair was grey.
"What think you of life?" said Igraine.
"You should know, sister, as well as I."
"But you see, father, I am not a nun,--only a novice."
He stared at her a moment with a slight smile.
"Remain a novice," he said.
"You advise me so!"
"Why subordinate your soul to chains forged of men."
"These seem strange words."
He patted his dog's head, and, half stooping, looked at her with keen
grey eyes.
"Have you ever loved a man?"
"Yes," she said, with a clear laugh and a slight colour.
"Is he worthy?"
"I believe him a noble soul."
"Naturally."
"He ran away and left me because he thought I was a nun."
The hermit applauded.
"That sounds like honour," he said critically.
"I am seeking him to tell him the truth."
"And I will pray that you may soon meet," said the old man, "for there
is nothing like the love of a good man for a clean maid. If I had
married a true woman, I should never have taken to the scourge or the
stone bed. Marry wisely and you are halfway to Heaven."
They broke fast that morning in the garden, it being the man's custom
to make his meals on the granite slab that served him as a bed. The
little dale looked very green and gracious in the tranquil light, with
its curling brook and dark barriers of trees. Igraine, as she sat on
the great stone and ate the hermit's bread, followed the brook with
her thoughts, wondering whether it became the stream that ran through
Eudol's meadows. She was for Sarum that day, where she would throw off
her grey habit and take some dress more likely to baffle Gorlois. She
had enough money in her purse. Worldling again, she could give herself
to winning sight of this Uther, and to learning whether he was the
Pelleas she sought or no.
As she sat and fingered her bread, something she saw down the dale made
her rigid and still as a priestess smitten with the vision of a god in
some heathen oratory. Her eyes were very wide, her lips open and very
white, her whole air as of one watching in a sudden stupor of awe.
Another moment and she had broken from the mood like a torrent from a
cavern. With eyes suddenly amber bright, she touched the hermit's hand
and pointed down the dale, gave him a word or so, then left him and ran
down the hill.
A man on a black horse had ridden out from the trees, and was pushing
his horse over the brook at a shallow spot not far away. His red armour
glowed in the sun with a metallic lustre. Even at that distance Igraine
had seen the red dragon rampant on a shield of green. As she ran down
the grass slope she called the man by name, thinking to see him turn
and come to her. Pushing on sullenly as though he had not heard the
cry that went after him like winged love, he drew up the further slope
without wavering, and sank like a red streak into the dense green of
the trees.
X
Igraine forded the brook and followed the man by the winding path that
curled away into the wood.
She was ever a sanguine soul, and the mere sinister influences that
might have discouraged her in her purpose that morning were impotent
before the level convictions of her heart. She had seen Pelleas ride
in amid the trees; she was sure as death as to his cognizance and his
armour. Now Pelleas, she could vow, had not heard her call to him,
and if he had heard he had not understood; if he had seen he had not
recognised. Doubts could have no place in the argument before such a
justification by faith.
It was not long before she caught sight of the red glint of armour
going through the trees. It came and went, grew and disappeared, as
the path folded it in its curves or thrust out a heavy screen of green
to hide it like a heavy curtain. The man was going as he pleased, now
a walk, now a casual jog, now a short burst of a canter over an open
patch. One moment Igraine would see him clearly, then not at all.
Sometimes she gained, sometimes lost ground, yet the knight of the red
harness never seemed to come within lure of her voice.
In due course she reached the place where the path ended bluntly on the
Winchester high-road, and where the way ran straight as a spear-shaft,
so that she could see Pelleas riding for Winchester with a lead of a
quarter of a mile. The distant ringing tramp of hoofs came up to her
like a mocking chuckle. Putting her hands to her mouth, she hallooed
with all the breath left her by her run through the wood; yet, as far
as she might see, the man never so much as turned in the saddle, while
the smite of hoofs died down and down into a well of silence.
Another halloo and no echo.
"He's asleep, or deaf in his helmet."
She forgot the distance and the din of hoofs that might well have
drowned the thin cry that could have reached the rider. Maugre her heat
and her flushed face Igraine had no more thought of giving in than she
had of marrying Gorlois. With Pelleas so near she had made her vow to
follow him, and follow him she would like a comet's tail. If needs be
she would wear her sandals to the flesh, but catch the man she must in
the end.
A mile more on the high-road, with her feet and the hem of her gown
dust-drenched, and she was still little nearer the man in the red
harness for all her hurrying. She could have vowed more than once that
he turned in his saddle and looked back at her as though to see how
near she had come to him on the road. A mile from the hermitage path
he turned his horse southwards from the track into a grass valley
headed by a ruined tower and hedged densely on either hand by pine
woods. Igraine, seeing from a slight rise in the road this change of
course, cut away crosswise with the notion of getting near the man or
of intercepting him before he should win clear law again. After all,
the effort added only more vexation. She saw the black horse pressed to
a canter and cross the point where she might have cut him off, while a
great stretch of furze that rolled away to the black palisading of the
pines came down and threw a promontory in her path. Pelleas was a mile
to the good when she had skirted the furze and the bend of the wood,
and taken a straight course southwards down the valley between the
pines.
All that morning the sport of hunter and hunted went on between the
novice in grey and the man on the black horse. For all her trouble
Igraine won little upon him, lost little as the hours went by; while
the rider in turn seemed in no wise desirous of being rid of her for
good. They passed the pine woods with their midnight aisles, forded a
stream, climbed up a heath, went over it amid the heather. From the
last ridge of the heath Igraine saw the country sloping away into
undulating grasslands, piled here and there with domes of thicketed
trees. Far to the south a dense black mass rose like a rounded hill
against the sky. The man in red was still about a mile in front of her,
riding slowly, a red speck in a waste of green. Igraine, having him in
view from her vantage point, lay down full length to rest and take some
food. She was tired enough, but dogged at heart as ever. She vowed that
if the man was playing with her she would tell him her mind, love or no
love, when she came up with him in the end.
As the sun swam into the noontide arc she went on again downhill,
and found in turn that the man had halted, for he had been hidden by
trees, and getting view of him suddenly she saw him sitting on a stone
with his horse tethered near. As soon as Igraine was within measurable
distance she took advantage of a hollow, dropped on her hands and
knees, and began to crawl like a cat after a bird. Edging round a
thicket she came quite near the man, but could not see his face. His
spear stood in the ground by his horse, and he had his shield slung
about his neck, and a bare poniard in his hand. It was clear that he
was watching for Igraine, for despite her craft he caught sight of her
face peering white under the hem of a bush, and climbed quickly into
the saddle. Igraine started up, made a dash across the open, calling
to him as she ran. Perverse as hate his horse broke into a canter
and left her far in the rear. The girl shook her fist at him with a
sudden burst of temper. She was standing near the stone where the man
had been sitting. Looking at its flat face she saw the reason of the
naked poniard in his hand, for he had been carving out thin straggling
letters in the stone.
"Sancta Igraine," she read--
"Ora pro nobis."
The screed dispelled the doubts in Igraine's mind on the instant.
Palpably the man knew well enough who was following him, and was
avoiding her of set purpose; but for what reason Igraine racked her wit
to discover. She ran through many things in her heart, the possible
testing of her devotion, a vacillating weakness on Pelleas's part
that would not let him leave her altogether, a freakish wish to give
her penance. Then, she knew that he was superstitious, and the thought
flashed to her that he might think her a wraith, or some evil spirit
that had taken her shape to have him in temptation. Maugre her vexation
and her pride she held again on the trail, eating as she went some
dried plums that she had in her wallet. The man had slackened down
again and was less than half a mile away, now limned against the sky,
now folded into a hollow or shut out by trees. Like a marsh-fire he
tantalised her with a mystery of distance, holding steadily south at a
level tramp, while Igraine plodded after him, her hair down and blowing
out to the casual wind, her eyes at gaze on the red lure in the van.
So the mellower half of the day passed, and towards evening they neared
the mount of trees Igraine had seen from the last ridge of the heath
at noon. The black horse was heading straight for the cloudy mass in a
way that set Igraine thinking and casting about for Pelleas's motive.
Perhaps he had some quest in the solitary place that needed his single
hand. Would he take to the wood and let her follow as before, or had he
any purpose in leading her thither? Drowned in conjecture she gave up
prophecy with a vicious sense of mystification, and accepted inevitable
ignorance for the time being as to the man's moods and motives. She was
no less obstinate to follow him to the death. If she only had a horse
she would come near the man, pride or no pride, and tell him the truth.
Pressing on, with her strained ankle beginning to limp, she topped
the round back of a grass rise and came full in view of the wood she
had long seen in the distance. It looked very solemn in the declining
light. The great trunks of giant beeches were packed pillar upon pillar
into an impenetrable gloom. The foliage above, densely green, billowy,
touched with red and gold, rolled upwards cloud on cloud as the ground
ascended to the south and east. A great bronze carpet of dead leaves
swept away into the night of the trees. There was an eternal hush, a
gross silence, over the glooming aisles that seemed to beckon to the
soul, to draw the heart into the night of foliage as into a cavern.
Over all was the glowing ægis of the setting sun.
Igraine saw the man on the forest's edge where an arch of gloom struck
into the inner shadows. He was facing the west, motionless as stone on
his black horse, with the slanting light plucking a dull red gleam from
his harness. There was a mystery about him that seemed to harmonise
with the stillness of the trees and the black yawn of the forest
galleries. Igraine imagined that he might be in a mood at last to speak
with her if he believed her human. At all events, if he took to the
trees, and she did not lose him, she would have the vantage of him and
his horse in such a barricaded place.
It began to grow dark very quickly as she passed down the gradual slope
towards the forest. The trees towered above her, a black mass rising
again towards the east. Keen to see the man's mood, she hurried on
and found him still steadfast in the great arch, that seemed like the
gate of the wilderness, ready to abide her. A hundred paces more and
her heart began to beat the faster, and the moil of the day's march
dwindled before the influx of a rosier idyl. Every step towards Pelleas
seemed to take her higher up the turret stair of love till her lips
should meet those that bent at last from the gloom to hers. Pride and
vexation lay fallen far below, dropped incontinently like a ragged
cloak; a more generous passion shone out like cloth of gold; she was no
longer weary. Her eyes were very bright, her face full of a splendid
wistfulness, as she neared the man under the trees, looking up to see
his face.
Twilight lay deep violet under the wooelshawe, while horse and man were
dim and impalpable, great shadows of themselves. Igraine could not see
the man's face for the mask over the mezail of his helmet, and he was
silent as death. She was quite close to him now and ready to speak his
name, when he wheeled suddenly, looked back at her, and pointed into
the wood with his long spear. She ran forward and would have taken hold
of his bridle, but he waved her back and slanted his spear at her in
mute warning. Igraine, heart-hungry, could hold herself no longer.
"Man--man, are you stone?"
He rode straight ahead into the night of the trees and said never a
word. Igraine drew her breath.
"Pelleas."
"Ah, Igraine."
The voice that came to her was muffled like the voice of a mourner, yet
the girl thought she caught the old deep tone of it like the low cry of
the wind.
"Why do you vex me?"
"Follow!"
"Pelleas, Pelleas, I am no nun!"
"Follow!"
"I kept this truth from you too long."
"Follow!"
"Pelleas, would you hurt my heart more?"
"Follow; God shall make all plain and good."
She gave in with a half-sob, and bent quietly to the man's mood, though
she had no notion what he purposed in his heart, or what his desires
were in mystifying her thus. No doubt it would be well in the end if
Pelleas bade her follow like a penitent and promised ultimate peace. At
least he had not turned her away, and she trusted him to the death. He
was a strong, deep-sensed soul, she knew, and her deceiving may have
made him bitter in measure, and not easily appeased. In this queer
trial of endurance, this tempting of her temper, she thought she read a
penance laid upon her by the man for the way she had used his love.
They were soon far into the wood, with the western sky dwindling
between the innumerable pillars of the trees. It began to be dark and
utterly silent save for the rustle of the dead leaves as they went, and
the shrilling chafe of bridle or scabbard, or the snort of the great
horse. Wherever the eye turned the forest piers stood straight and
solemn as the columns in a hypostyle hall in some Egyptian temple. The
fretwork of boughs roofed them in with hardly a glimmering through of
the darkening sky above. There was a pungent autumn scent on the air
that seemed to rise like the incense of years that had fallen to decay
on the brown flooring of the place, and there was no breath or vestige
of a wind.
Presently as the day died the wood went black as the winter night,
and Igraine kept close by the man, with his armour giving a dull
gleam now and again to guide her. They were passing up what seemed to
be a great arcade cut through the very heart of the wood, as though
leading to some shrine or altar, relic of Druid days, or times yet more
antique. The tunnel ran a curved course, bending deeper and deeper as
it went into the dense horde of trees. So dark was the wood that it
was possible to see but a few paces in advance, and Igraine wondered
how the man kept the track. She was close at his stirrup now, with the
dark mass of him and his horse rising above her like a statue in black
basalt. Though he never spoke to her, and though she touched no part of
him, his horse, or his harness, she felt content with the queer sense
of trust and proximity that pervaded her. There was magic in the mere
companionship. As she had humbled her will to Pelleas's the night when
he had taken her from the beech tree in Andredswold, so now in like
fashion she surrendered pride and liberty, and became a child.
Suddenly the trackway straightened out into a great colonnade that
ran due south between trees of yet vaster girth. Igraine felt the man
rein in and abide motionless beside her as she held to the stirrup
and waited for what next should chance. Silence seemed like depths
of black water over them, and they could hear each other take breath
like the faint flux and reflux of a sea. Igraine saw the man lift his
spear, a dim streak less black than the vault above, and hold it as a
sign for her to listen. Her blood began to tingle a very little. There
was something far away on the dead, stagnant air, a sort of swirl of
sound, shrill and harmonious, like a wind playing through the strings
of a harp. It was very gradual, very impalpable. As the volume of it
grew it seemed to rush nearer like a wind, to swell into a swaying
plaintive song smitten through with the wounded cry of flutes. It gave
a notion of wood-fays dancing, of whirling wings and flitting gossamer
moonbright in the shadows. Igraine's blood seemed to spin the faster,
and her hand left the stirrup and touched the man's thigh. He gave
never a word or sign in the dark. She spoke to him very softly, very
meekly.
"What place is this, Pelleas?"
She saw him bend slightly in the saddle.
"It is called the Ghost Forest," he said.
"What are the sounds we hear?"
"Who can tell!"
Igraine had hardly heard him, when a streak of phosphor light flickered
among the trees, coming and going incessantly as the great trunks
intervened. It neared them in gradual fashion, and then blazed out
sudden into the open aisle, a man in armour riding on a great white
horse, his harness white as the moon, his face pale and wide-eyed, his
hair like a mass of twisted silver wire. A misty glow haloed him round,
and though he rode close there seemed no sound at all to mark his
passing. As he had come, so he went, with streaks of flickering light
that waxed less and less frequent till they died in the dark, and left
the place empty as before. Igraine thought the air cold when he had
gone.
She felt the black horse move beside her, and they went on as before
into the night of the trees. The noise of flute and harp that had
ceased awhile bubbled up again quite near, so that it was no longer
the ghost of a sound, but noise more definite, more discrete. It had a
queer way of dying to a sighing breath, and then gathering gradually
into an ascending burst of windy melody. Igraine could almost fancy
that she heard the sweep of wings, the soft thrill of silks trailing
through the trees, yet the man on the horse said never a word as they
went on like a pair of mutes to a grave.
The colonnade opened out abruptly on a great circular clearing in the
wood shut in by crowded trunks, its open vault above cut by a dense
ring of foliage. A grey light came down from the sky, showing great
stones piled one upon another, others fallen and sunk deep in rank
grass and brambles. The man halted his horse in the very centre of the
clearing, with Igraine beside him, watchful for what should happen, and
for the moment when Pelleas should unbend.
Hardly had she looked over the great cromlechs, black and sinister in
that solitary wilderness, than the whole wood about them seemed dusted
suddenly with points of fire. North, south, east, and west torches and
cressets came jerking redly out of the night, flitting behind the trees
in a wide circle, gathering nearer and nearer without a sound. They
might have been great fireflies playing through the aisles and ways,
or goblin lamps carried by fairy folk. Igraine drew very close to the
man's horse for comfort, and looked up to see his face, but found it
dark and hidden. Her hand crept up past the horse's neck, rested on the
mane a moment, and ventured yet further to meet the man's hand, where
it gripped the bridle. For a minute they abode thus without a sound,
watching the weird torch-dance in the wood.
With a sudden gibber of laughter and a swirl of pipes the throng of
lights seemed to seethe to the very margin of the clearing. Queer
phantastic shapes showed amid the trees, and the great circle grew wide
with light, and the grey cromlechs surprised in sleep by the glare and
piping. At that very moment Igraine had a thought of some one looking
deep into her eyes, of a will, a power, streaming in upon her like
sunlight into a sleepy pool. Her desire went from the man on the black
horse into the square shadow of the great central cromlech, where an
indefinite influence seemed to lurk. Looking long under the roofing
stone, she grew aware of a tall something standing there, of a pair of
eyes like the eyes of a panther, of a lean white hand moving in the
shadows.
The eyes under the cromlech seemed to follow Igraine like fire, and to
burn in upon her a foreign influence. Rebellious and wondering, she
stiffened herself against a spiritual combat that seemed moving upon
her out of the dark. She could have smitten the eyes that stared her
down, and yet the magnetic stupor of them kindled up things in her
heart that were strange and newly sensuous. She felt her strength sway
as though her soul were being lifted from her, and she was warmed from
top to toe like one who has taken wine, and whose being swims into an
idyllic glorification of the senses. Again her desire seemed turned to
the man in red harness, yet when she looked the saddle was empty, and
the horse held by an armed servant, who wore a wolfs head for covering.
Still mute with fear, desire, and wonder, she saw a tall figure move
into the full glare of the torches, a figure in red harness with a
shield of green, and a red dragon thereon, and with head unhelmed. The
armour was like the armour of Pelleas, but the face was the face of the
man Gorlois.
And now the eyes under the shadow of the cromlech were full and strong
upon Igraine. Breathing fast with a hand at her throat she stepped back
from Gorlois--hesitated--stood still. She was very white, and her eyes
were big and sightless like the eyes of one walking in a dream. For all
her strength, her scorn, and the tricking of her heart, she was being
swept like a cloud into the embraces of the sun. Reason, power, love,
sank away and became as nothing. A shudder passed over her. Presently
her hands dropped limp as broken wings, and her body began to sway like
a tall lily in a breeze. A gradual stupor saw her cataleptic; she stood
impotent, played upon by the promptings of another soul.
Gorlois went near to her with hands outstretched, stooping to look into
her face. A sudden light kindled in her eyes, her lips parted, and new
life flooded red into her cheeks as at the beck of love. She bent to
Gorlois full of a gracious eagerness, a wistful desire that made her
face golden as dawn. Her hand sought his, while the shadowy shape under
the cromlech watched them with never-wavering eyes. Gorlois's arms were
round her now all wreathed in her hair; her face was turned to his; her
hands were clasped upon his neck. Another moment and he had touched her
lips with his.
A sound of flutes, the tinkling of a bell, and a solemn company
came threading from the trees, guests, acolytes, torch-bearers, in
glittering cloth of gold, with a great crucifix to lead them. Gorlois
and Igraine were hand in hand near the stone that hid the frame of
Merlin. A priest in a gorgeous cape drew near, and began his patter.
The vows were taken, the pact sealed, with the noise of a chant and
music. Thus under the benedictions of the great trees, and the spell of
Merlin, Gorlois and Igraine were made man and wife.