"Bide with me and rest. See, I will feed your horse and give him water;

he will do famously under the tree. There is my bed yonder in the

corner; I spread a clean sheet on it this very morning. Shall I help

you to unarm?"

"Thanks, child. How the rain hisses into the pool."

"I love the sound, and the soft rattle on the green leaves. All will be

fresh and aglister to-morrow, and the flowers will smile, and the trees

shake their heads and laugh. How clumsy my fingers are; I am so slow

over the buckles; ah! there is the last. I will put the sword and the

shield by the bed. Shall we say our prayers?"

"You pray, child; I have forgotten how to these many months."

VIII

There is a charm in simplicity of soul, and in sympathies green in

the first rich burgeoning of the mind, unshrivelled and untainted by

the miserable misanthropies of the world. The girl Garlotte was as

ignorant as you will, but she loved God, had the heart of a thrush

in spring-time, and was possessed naturally of a warm and delicate

appreciation of the feelings of others that would have put to utter

shame the majority of court ladies.

Women of a certain gilded class are prone to judge by superficialities.

Living often in an artificial air of courtesy, the very life about them

is a cultured, perfumed atmosphere unstirred by the deeper wind-throbs

of true passion, or the solemn sweep of the more grand emotions.

Hypocrisy, veneered with mannerisms, propped with etiquette, pegged up

with gold, passes for culture and the badge-royal of fine breeding.

Of such things the girl Garlotte was indeed flagrantly ignorant; she

had lived in solitudes, and had learnt to comprehend dumb things--the

cry of a sheep in pain, the mute look from the eyes of a sick lamb.

Her life had made her quick to see, quick to discover. She had all

the latent energy of a child, and her senses were the undebauched

handmaids of an honest heart. She knew nothing of the trivial prides,

the starched and petty arrogances, the small self-satisfactions, that

build up the customs of the so-called cultured folk. She thought her

thoughts, and they were generous ones, mark you, and spoke out on the

instant without fear, as one whose words were in very truth the audible

counterpart of the vibrations of her mind.

To Igraine at first there was some embarrassment in the ingenuous

methods of this child of the forest. It was in measure disturbing to be

confronted with a pair of blue eyes that looked at one like two pools

of truth, and a pair of lips that naively remarked: "You seem pale,

lady, and in pain; you slept little, and talked even when you slept. I

am rosy and cheerful, and I sleep from dusk till dawn. What is there

in your heart that is not in mine?" Still, with the abruptness once

essayed, there was a refreshing sincerity in Garlotte's openness of

heart. It was as the first plunge into a clear, cool pool--a gasp at

the first moment, then infinite warmth, intense kindling of all the

senses, with the clean ripples bubbling at the lips and the swinging

water buoying up the bosom. Garlotte recalled Lilith--Radamanth's

daughter--to Igraine, only that she had more penetration, more liberty

of thought and character. The one was as a warm wind that lulled, the

other a breeze blowing over open water--clean, invigorating, kind.

Igraine's mood of unrest found refuge in the valley, and in Garlotte's

cottage. She won some measure of inward calmness in the simple life,

the simple tasks, that kept the more sinister energies of the mind at

bay. It contented her for a season with its companionship, its air of

home, its green quiet and tranquil beauty. Garlotte's cheerfulness of

soul, like some penetrating essence, suffused itself upon Igraine,

despite the militant savour of things more turbulent. She fell into

temporary contentment almost against her will, even as sleep enforces

itself upon a brain extravagantly possessed by the delirium of fever.

For all the quiet of the place, circumstances were gathering and

moving down upon her with that ghostly and inevitable fatefulness that

constitutes true tragedy. No one could have seemed more hidden from the

eye of fate than she in the deep umbrage of the trees, yet often when

the heart imagines itself most secure from the factious meddling of the

world, the far, faint cry of destiny smites on the ear like some sudden

stirring of a wind at night.

It was late evening, on the fifth day of Igraine's sojourn in the

valley. The day had been dull, grey, and colourless, wrapped in a blue

haze of rain that had fallen heavily, drenching the woods and making

monotonous music on the water. Towards evening the sky had melted to a

serene azure; the air was a web of shimmering amber, the west streamed

through a mist of gold, and every leaf glittered with dew. A luminous

vapour hovered over the little mere, and there were rain pools in the

meadows that burnt with a hundred sunsets like clear brass.

Garlotte and Igraine had been bathing in the mere. They had come up

from the water to dry themselves upon a napkin of white cloth, the

bronze-gold and brown hair of each meeting like twin clouds, while

their linen lay like snow on the trailing branches of a tree near

the pool. Their limbs and shoulders gleamed against the silver-black

mirror spread by the mere; their voices made a mellow sound through the

valley as they talked. Igraine had fastened her violet surcoat about

her beneath her breasts; Garlotte's blue smock still hung from a branch

above her head.

As they sat under the tree, drying their hair and looking over the

pool to the forest realm beyond, Igraine told the girl much of the

outer world as she had seen it; nor was her instruction unleavened by a

certain measure of cynicism--a bitterness that surprised Garlotte not

a little. The girl had great dreams of the glories of old cities, the

splendour of court life, the zest of a mere material existence.

"You do not love the great world," she said.

"Once, child, I did. Everything outside a convent wall seemed good

to me; I thought men heroes, and the world a faerie place; who has

not! Thoughts change with time: that which I once hungered for, now I

despise."

"I have never been into a great city, not even into Caerleon. My father

loved the country and said it was God's pasture."

"I would rather have a dog for a friend than most men, child. Man is

always thinking of his stomach, his strength, or his passion; he is

vain, dull, and surly often; takes delight in slaying dumb things;

drinks beer, and sleeps like a log save for his snoring."

"But Renan doesn't."

"There are some _men_, child, among the swine."

"And the women?"

"I have known good women."

"In the convent?"

"I suppose there they were good, just as stones that lie in the grass

are good in that they do very little harm."

"But they served God!"

"Mere habit, just as you eat your dinner."

"A hard saying."

"Your sayings would be hard, child, if you had learnt what I have

learnt of the world."

Garlotte pulled her blue smock from the tree and wrapped it round her

shoulders.

"But you love God?" she said.

"What is God?"

"The Great Father who loves all things."

"Methinks then I am nothing."

"Nothing, Igraine?"

"You say God loves all men and women. Why, then, have I been cursed

with perversities ever since I was born, tormented with contradictions,

baffled, and mocked, till the eternal trivialities of life now make my

soul sick in my body?"

"Sorrow is heaven sent to chasten, just as rain freshens the leaves."

"Old, old proverb. Rain comes from clouds; clouds hide the sun; how can

sorrow be good, child, when it darkens the light of life, hides God

from the heart, and makes the soul bitter?"

"That seems the wrong spirit, Igraine."

"So meek folk say; we are not all mild earth to be smitten and make no

moan. There are sea-spirits that lash and foam, fire-spirits that leap

and burn. My spirit is of the flame; am I to be cursed, then, because I

was born with a soul of fire?"

"We cannot answer all this, Igraine."

"I hate to bow down blindly, to cast ashes on the head because a

superstition bids us so."

"I have faith!"

"I cannot see with my heart."

"I would you could, Igraine."

"Perhaps you are right."

Garlotte put on her shift and frock with a sigh, and straightway went

and kissed Igraine on the forehead. They sat close together under the

tree and watched the valley grow dim as death, and the pool black and

lustrous as a mirror turned to the twilight. Garlotte's warm heart

was yearning to Igraine; her arm was close about her, and presently

Igraine's head rested upon her shoulder. She began to tell the girl

many things in a still, stifled voice; her bitterness gushed out like

fermented wine, and for a season she was comforted--with no lasting

balm indeed, for there was but one soul in the world that could give

her that.

"Believe, Igraine, believe," said Garlotte very softly.

"Believe--child!"

"That there is good for every one in the world if we wait and watch in

patience."

"I seem to have watched years go by, and life stretches out from me as

a sea at night."

"Look not there, Igraine, but into your own heart and into the gold of

faith."

"I have no heart to look to, child."

"Save into a man's. And it was a good heart."

"Good as a god's."

"Then look into it still."

"You speak like a mother."

They had talked on into the dusk of night, forgetful of time, hearing

only the dripping from the leaves, seeing nothing but the short stretch

of water and herbage at their feet. Yet an hour ago a figure in a

palmer's cloak and cowl had come out from the western forest and stood

leaning upon its staff, to stare out broodingly over the valley. The

laurel green of the man's cloak harmonised so magically with the green

of grass and tree that it was difficult to isolate his figure from the

framing of wood and meadow.

The pilgrim had stood long in the shadows and watched the two white

forms come up out of the waters of the pool. He had seen them sit

and dry their hair under the tree as the dusk crept down. While they

talked he had passed down towards the cottage, accompliced by the

trees, slipping from trunk to trunk, to enter the cottage itself while

the girls' faces were turned from it towards the pool. From one of

the narrow casements his cowled face had looked out; he had marked

Igraine's red gold shimmering hair; he had seen her face for a moment,

also the shield hanging in the room with its cloven heart and white

lilies, the sword and helmet, the harness of workmanship so subtle.

When he had seen all this he had stolen out again into the gloaming,

a thin gliding streak of green under the gnarled thorns and the

night-bosomed cedars. The forest had taken him to its depths again and

the unutterable silence of its shades. The girls by the pool had heard

no sound, nor dreamt of the thing that had been so near, watching like

a veritable ghost through the mist of the mere's twilight.

Caerleon slept under the moon, a dream city in a land of dreams. Its

walls were like ivory in a dark gloom of green. The tower of the palace

of the king caught a coronet from the stars, while in the window of an

upper room a thin flame flickered like a yellow rose blown athwart the

black foliage of the night. Within blood-red curtains breathed over the

arched door; a little altar stood against the eastern wall, guarded

above by angels haloed with gold, standing in a mist of lilies with

wings of crimson and green. The silence of the hour seemed embalmed in

silver--so pure, so still, so hallowed was it.

Uther knelt before the little altar in prayer; the light from the

single lamp slanted down upon him, but left his face in the shadow.

It was past midnight, yet the man's head was still bowed down in

his devotion. He was in an ecstasy of spiritual ascent to heaven, a

mood that made the world a Patmos, and his own soul a revelation to

itself. At such a time his imagination could mount with a mystery of

poetic rapture. Angels drumming on golden bells or bearing diamond

chalices of purple wine seemed to gaze deep-eyed on him from a paradise

of snow and amethyst. Above all shone the Eternal Face, that clear

sun of Christendom shining with wounded love through the crimson

transgressions of mankind.

Deliberate footfalls and the rustle of a drawn curtain intervened

between solitude and devotion. The curtain fell again; footfalls echoed

away to die down into a well of silence; a tall man wrapped in a cloak

stood motionless in the oratory. Uther, still upon his knees, turned to

the window and the moonlight, with big prayerful eyes that questioned

the intruding figure.

"Merlin," he said, with a breath of prophecy.

"Even so, sire."

"I was praying but now for such a thing."

"Sire, pray no longer. I have kept my tryst."

Uther rose up straightway from before the altar and stood before the

square of the casement. The moonlight made a halo of his hair, and lit

his face with a whiteness that seemed almost supernatural. Strong as he

was, his hands shook like aspen leaves; his lips were parted, and his

eyes wide with the shadow of the night. Merlin stood in the dark angle

of the room; his voice seemed to come as from a tomb; the single lamp

flame shook and quivered in a fickle draught.

"Sire, the moon is not yet full."

"And Igraine?"

"Sire."

"Where?"

"Suffer me, sire, a moment."

"Speak quickly. God knows, I have prayed like a Samson."

Merlin cast his mantle from him, and stood out in the moonlight wrapped

in the mystic symbolism of his robe. Sapphire and emerald, ruby and

sardonyx, flashed with a ghostly gleam in the pale light, and caught

the moonbeams in their folds. Merlin's thin hands quivered like a spray

of May blossom waving in the night wind, and his eyes were like the

eyes of a leopard.

"Sire, thou wert Pelleas once."

"I should remember it."

"Thou art Pelleas again."

"Again?"

"In thy red harness with thy painted shield, thy black horse; take them

all."

"The past rushes back like dawn."

"Near Caerleon lies a valley."

"There are twenty valleys."

"Go north, sire, in thought. Pass the Cross on Beacon Hill, hold on for

the Abbey of the Blessed Mary, take to the hills, go by a ruined tower,

ford Usk, where there is a hermitage. Pass through a waste, cross more

hills, go down into a valley that runs north and south."

"I follow."

"Go alone, sire."

"Alone."

"The valley is piled steep with forestland. Go down and fear not. In

the valley's lap lie meadowlands, a pool, a cottage. In that cottage

you shall find a knight; his armour is gilded gold, his horse a grey,

his shield shows a cloven heart set amid white lilies. Speak with that

knight."

"Yet more!"

"Speak with that knight, sire."

"In peace?"

"If you love your soul."

"And Igraine--Merlin, what of her?"

"That knight shall lead you to her. Sire, I have said."

IX

It was early and a clear dewy morning when Uther rode down alone from

the palace by a narrow track that curled through the shrubberies

clothing the palace hill. A generous sky piled its blue dome with

mountainous clouds that billowed up above the horizon. The laurels

in the shrubbery flickered their leaves like innumerable scales of

silver in the sun; amber sun rays slanted through the dense branches of

the yews, and flashed on the red harness that burnt down the winding

track. The wind sang, the green larches tossed their 'kerchiefs, in the

distance the sea glimmered to the white frescoes of the sky.

Uther--Pelleas once more--tossed his spear to the tall trees, and burst

into the brave swing of a _chant d'amour_. With caracole and flapping

mane his horse took his lord's humour. It was weather to live and love

in, weather for red lips and the clouding down of perfumed hair. God

and the Saints--what a grand thing to be strong, to have a clean heart

to show to a woman's eyes! What were all the baser fevers of life

balanced against the splendid madness of a great passion!

Down through Caerleon's streets he rode unknown of any on his tall

black horse. It was pleasant to be unthroned for once, and to put

a kingdom from off his shoulders. With what a swing the good beast

carried him, how the towers and turrets danced in the sun, how bright

were the eyes of the women who passed him by. All the world seemed

greener, the sky bluer, the city merrier; the laughter of the children

in the gutter echoed out of heaven; the old hag who sold golden lemons

under a beech tree seemed almost a madonna--a being from a better

world. Uther laughed in his heart, and blessed God and Merlin.

It is one of the rare reflections of philosophy dear to the

contemplative mind, how joy jostles pain in the world, and pleasure in

gold and scarlet elbows the grey-cloaked form of grief. Even innocent

merriment may throw a rose in the face of one who mourns, innocent

indeed of the desire to mock. The throstle sings in the tree while

the beggar lies under it dying. So Uther the King flashed hate in the

eyes of one who watched,--knowing him only that morning as Pelleas

the knight. In an old play the jealous man saw the devil ride by, and

promptly followed him on the chance of finding his lost wife, deeming,

indeed, the devil's guidance propitious for such a quest.

It was the shield that caught Gorlois's eye as he stood on a balcony

of his house and looked out over Caerleon. The device smote him sudden

as the lash of a whip. The red harness, the black horse, the painted

shield, mingled a picture that burnt into his brain with a vividness

that passed comprehension. He knew well enough to whom such arms should

belong; had he not carried them fraudulently to his own doubtful

profit? This knight must be that Pelleas whose past had worked such

mischief with his own machinations, that Pelleas who had won Igraine

the novice fresh from the shadow of her convent trees. Gorlois watched

the man go by with a kind of superhuman envy twisting in him like a

colic. The smart of it made him stiffen, go pale, gnaw his lip.

If this was the knight Pelleas, what then? Gorlois could not reason

for the moment; his brain seemed a mass of molten metal in a bowl

of iron. Convictions settled slowly, hardened and took form. Igraine

had loved the man Pelleas; Igraine was his wife; he had lost her and

Brastias also; poison and the sword waited to do their work. Supposing

then this Pelleas was in quest of Igraine; supposing they had come to

know each other again; supposing Brastias and Pelleas were one and the

same man. Hell and furies--what a thought was this! It goaded Gorlois

into action. He would ride after the man, hunt him, track him, in hope

of some fragment of the truth. Hazard and hate, blood and battle, these

were more welcome than chafing within walls as in a cage, or frying on

a bed as on a gridiron.

Gorlois's voice rang through gallery and hall like a battle-cry.

"Ho, there!--my sword and harness."

There was a grimness in the sound that made those who came to arm him

bustle for dear life. They knew his black, furious humour, the hand

that struck like a mace, the tyranny that took blood for trifles. The

stoutest of them were cowards before that marred and moody face. Be as

brisk as they would, they were too slow for Gorlois's temper, a temper

vicious as a wounded bear's.

"God and the Saints--was ever man served by such a pack of

stiff-fingered fools! The devil take your fumbling. Go and gird up

harlots, or hold cooking-pots. On with that helmet."

A fellow, very white about the mouth, clapped the casque on, and drew

a quick breath when the angry eyes withered him no longer. Armlets,

breastplates, greaves, cuishes, all were on. Gorlois seemed to emit

fire like metal at white heat. He went clanging down stairway and

through atrium to the courtyard, where a horseboy held a white charger.

Gorlois cuffed the lad aside, mounted with a spring, took his spear

from an esquire, and rode straight for the gate, his horse's hoofs

sparking fire from the courtyard stones. Half an hour or more had gone

since Pelleas had passed by on his black horse, and Gorlois spurred at

a gallop through Caerleon, bent on catching sight of the red knight

before he should have ridden into the covering masses of the woods.

Pelleas meanwhile rode on like a lad whose first quest led him into the

infinite romance of the unknown. Woods and waters called; bare night

and the blink of the stars summoned up that strangeness in life that

is like wine to the heart of the strong and the brave. He was young

again--young in the first glory of arms; the world shone glamoured as

of old as he turned from the high-road to a bridle-track that led up

through woods towards the north.

Holding on at a level pace he passed the woods and saw them rolling

back like a green cataract towards the sea. Bare hills saluted him;

the beacon height with its great wooden cross stood out against the

sky; mile on mile of wooded land billowed out before him, clouded with

a blue haze where the domes of the trees rose innumerably rank on

rank. The Abbey of the Holy Mary lay low in meadows on his left, its

fish pools shimmering in the sun, its orchards densely green about its

walls. Two leagues or more of wood and wild, a climb over hills, a long

descent, and Usk again shone out trailing distant in the hollows. A

crumbling tower stood up above the trees. Pelleas passed close to it,

giving antiquity due reverence as was his custom, looking up at its

ivied walls, its crown of gillyflowers, its windows wistful as a blind

man's eyes. Another mile and Usk ran at his feet. A hermitage stood

by the ford. Pelleas gave the good man a piece of silver and besought

his prayers before he rode down and splashed through the river to the

further bank. Heathland and scrub rolled to the east, merging into the

blue swell of a low line of hills. It was wild country enough, haunted

by snipe and crested plover, an open solitude that swept into a purple

streak against the northern sky.

It was noon before Pelleas had made an end of its shadeless glare

and taken to the hills that rose gently towards the east. His red

harness moving over the green was lost to Gorlois, who had missed the

trail long ago in the woods beyond St. Mary's. It was dusk when the

Cornishman came guided to the ford, and learnt from the hermit there

that the chase lay across Usk and eastward over the heath. Gorlois

gave the man no piece of silver, only a savage curse to gag his

alms-seeking. Night came and caught him in the open, and rather than

wander astray in the dark he spent the night under a whin bush, calming

his incontinent temper as best he might.

An hour past noon Pelleas stood on the last hill slope and looked down

upon the massed woodland at his feet. Here at last was Merlin's valley

choked up with trees--a green lake of foliage that rippled from ridge

to ridge. Pelleas, with the sun at his back, stood and looked down on

it with a kind of quiet awe. So Godfrey and his knights looked down

upon the holy city, so Dante saw Beatrice in his vision, and Cortez

gazed at the Pacific in the west. Pelleas had taken his helmet from

his head and hung it at his saddle-bow; there was a grand hunger on

his face, a passionate calm, as he abode on the hill top with his tall

spear a black streak against the sun.

Mystery waved him on to the great oaks whose tops rose like green

flames to the blue of the sky. Could Igraine be in this valley? Would

he set eyes on her that day, and see the bronze gloss of her hair go

shimmering through some woodland gallery? It was nigh upon a year since

he had seen her. It had been summer then, and it was summer now; his

heart was singing as it had sung on that mere island when Igraine had

looked into his eyes under the cedar tree. He had borne much, endured

much, since then; time had hallowed memory and shed a crimson lustre

over the past. Manwise, for the great love that was in him, he almost

feared to look on her again lest she should have changed in face or in

heart. Great God, what a thought was that! It had never smitten him

before. Stiffened by his own strong constancy, he had dowered Igraine

with equal loyalty of soul, nor had considered the lapse of time and

the crumbling power of hours. The thought brought a dew of sweat to his

forehead and made him cold even in the sun. No, honour to God, the girl

had a heart to be trusted, or he had never loved her as he did!

Shaking the bridle, he rode down into the murk of the trees. He had to

slant his spear and to bow his head often as the great boughs swooped

to the ground. The dim glamour of the place had a sinister effect upon

his mind; it solemnised him, touched the spiritual chords of his heart,

uncovered the somewhat gloomy groundwork of philosophy that lay deep

under the fabric of religious habit. Merlin had told a tale and nothing

more. God's blessings were not man's blessings, God's ways not man's

ways. Pelleas had learnt to look for what he might have called the

contradictions of divine charity. We are smitten when we pray for a

blessing, chided when desirous of comfort. Life would seem at times a

gigantic tyranny for the creation of patience. Pelleas remembered the

past, and kept his hopes and desires well in hand.

Betimes he judged himself not far from the bottom of the valley, for

through gaps in the foliage overhead he could see the woods on the

further slope towering up magnificently to touch the sky. Still further

the long galleries of the wood arched out upon grassland gemmed with

summer flowers. Showers of sunlight told of an open sky. He was soon

out of the shadows and standing under the wooelshawe, with the dale

Merlin had pictured stretching north and south before his eyes.

The scene smiled up at him from its bath of sunlight--the green meadows

flecked white, blue, and gold, the diverse foliage of the trees, the

little pool smooth as crystal, the solemn barriers of the surrounding

woods. He looked first of all for the cottage built of timber, and

could not see it for its overshadowing trees. None the less, by the

pool a girl in a blue smock stood looking up towards him, her face

showing oval white from her loosened hair. Pelleas held his breath for

the moment, then saw well enough that it was not Igraine. Meanwhile the

figure in blue had disappeared as though in fear of him; he could no

longer see the girl from where he watched on the edge of the wood.

Riding out, he sallied down through the long grass with its haze of

flowers, his eyes turned with a steadfast eagerness to the pool in the

meadows. His impatience grew with every step, but he was outwardly cool

as any veteran. First the brown thatch of the cottage came into view,

then the blue smock of the girl who stood by the porch and watched.

Last of all Pelleas saw a gleam of armour through the gloom of a cedar

tree, heard the neigh of a horse, the jar of a swinging shield. The

sight made his heart beat more briskly than ever ghost or goblin could

have done. Pushing through the trees he came full upon a knight mounted

on a grey horse, who was advancing towards him bearing on his shield

the cognisance of a cloven heart.

The knight on the grey horse reined in and abode stone still in the

meadows, the sunlight flashing on his helmet and such points of his

harness uncovered by his surcoat. Pelleas as he rode down took stock

of the stranger with an eagerness that was half jealous maugre his

perspicuity of soul. What had this splendid gentleman to do with

Igraine the novice? Truth to tell, Pelleas would rather have had some

humbler person to serve as guide on such a quest.

The knight on the grey horse never budged a foot. Pelleas saw that he

carried no spear and that his sword was safe in his scabbard. This

looked like peace. Drawing up some three paces away, he scanned the

strange knight over from head to foot, voted him a passable man, and

admired his armour. And since his whole soul was set on a certain

subject, he made no delay over courteous generalities, but came at once

to the point at issue.

"Greeting, sir; I have ridden from Caerleon to speak with you."

The knight in the violet surcoat swayed in the saddle as though shaken

by a spear thrust on his painted shield. Pelleas noted that both his

hands were tangled up in the grey horse's mane, though nothing could be

seen of the face behind the fixed vizor of the helmet. A voice, husky,

toneless, feeble, answered him after a moment's silence.

"What would you with me, knight of the red shield?"

"There is a lady whose name is Igraine; I seek her. I have been

forewarned that a knight lodging in this valley has knowledge of her,

and you, messire, seem to be that knight."

"That is the truth," quoth the cracked, husky voice from the helmet.

Pelleas considered a moment and held his peace. There was something

strange about this knight, something tragical, something that touched

the heart. Pelleas's instinct for superb miseries took hold of him with

a queer, twisting grip that made him shudder. His dark eyes smouldered

as he watched the strange knight, and gave voice to the grim thought

that lay heavy on his mind.

"The lady is not dead?"

"No," said the husky voice with blunt brevity.

"And she is well fortuned?"

"Passably."

"Thank God," said Pelleas.

There was a dry sob in the brazen helmet, but Pelleas never heard the

sound. He was staring into the woods with large, luminous eyes, and a

half smile on his lips, as though his thoughts pleased him.

"Is the Lady Igraine far from hence?" he asked presently.

"If you will follow me, my lord, I can bring you to her in less than an

hour."

Pelleas flushed red to the forehead, his dark eyes beamed. He looked a

god of a man as he sat bareheaded on his black horse, his face aglow

like the face of a martyr. The Knight of the Cloven Heart looked at

him, flapped his bridle, and rode on.

Pelleas said never a word as they passed up the valley. There were deep

thoughts in his heart, yearnings, and ecstasies of prayer that held

him in a stupor of silence. His was a grandeur of mind that grew the

grander for the majesty of passion. There was no blurting of questions,

no gabbling of news, no chatter, no flurry. Like a mountain he was

towering, sable-browed, impenetrable, while the thunder of suspense

lasted. The knight on the grey horse watched him narrowly with a white

look under his helmet that was infinitely plaintive.

At the northern end of the valley, on the very edge of the forest,

stood a thicket of gnarled thorns still smothered with the snow of

early summer. The Knight of the Cloven Heart drew rein in the long

grass and pointed Pelleas to these white pavilions under the near

umbrage of the oaks.

"Look yonder," said the voice.

Pelleas answered with a stare.

"Would you see your lady?"

"Be careful how you jest, my friend."

"I jest not, Uther Pendragon. Get you down and tether your horse; go in

amid yon trees and look into the forest. I swear on the cross you shall

see what you desire."

Pelleas gave the knight a long look, said nothing, dismounted, threw

the bridle over a bough. Then he thrust his spear into the ground and

went bareheaded in among the trees. Standing under the shadow of a

great oak, he peered long into the glooms, saw nothing living but a

rabbit feeding in the grass.

Suddenly a voice called to him.

"Pelleas, Pelleas."

It was a wondrous cry, clear and plaintive, yet tremulous with feeling.

It rang through the woods like silver, bringing back the picture of a

solemn beech wood under moonlight, and a girl tied naked to the trunk

of a tree. A great lustre of awe swept over Pelleas's face; his eyes

were big and luminous as the eyes of a blind man; he groped with his

hands as he passed back under the May trees to the valley.

In the long grass stood a woman in armour, her helmet thrown aside, and

her red gold hair pouring marvellous in the sunlight over her violet

surcoat. Her head was thrown back so as to show the full sweep of her

shapely throat; her face was very pale under her parted hair, while

her lids drooped over eyes that seemed to swim with unshed tears. Her

hands, slightly outstretched, quivered as with a shuddering impulse

from her heart, and her half-parted lips looked as though they were

moulded to breathe forth a moan.

Pelleas stood and stared at her as a dead man might look at God. He

drew near step by step, his face white as Igraine's, his eyes as deep

with desire as hers. Neither of them said a word, but stood and looked

into each other's faces as into heaven--awed, solemnised, silenced.

Above them towered the green woods; the meadows rippled from them with

their broidery of flowers; the scent of the white May swept fragrant on

the air. Solitude was with them, and the mild smile of Nature glimmered

with the sunlight over the trees.

Igraine spoke first.

"Pelleas," was all she said.

The man gave a great sob, fell on his knees, and would have kissed her

surcoat. Igraine bent down to him with eyes that shone like two deep

wells of love. Both her hands were upon Pelleas's shoulders, his face

was turned to hers.

"Kneel not to me."

"Igraine."

"Pelleas."

"Let me touch you."

"There, there, you have my hand."

"My God, my God!"

Igraine gave a low cry, half knelt, half fell before him. Pelleas's

arms caught her, his face hung over hers, her hair fell down and

trailed a golden pool upon the grass. She put her hands up and touched

his hair, smiled wonderfully, and looked at him as though she were

dying.

"Kiss me, Pelleas."

Pelleas drew a deep breath; his body seemed to quake; his whole soul

was sucked up by the girl's lips.

"Igraine," was all he said.

Her face blazed, her hands clung about his neck.

"Again, again."

"My God, have I not prayed for this!"

His eyes were large and wonderful to look upon. There was such awe and

love in them that an angel might have looked thus upon the Christ and

have earned no reproach. Igraine kissed his lips, crept close into his

bosom, hid her face, and wept.

X

When Igraine had ended her tears, and grown calm and quiet, Pelleas

took her hand and led her to a grass bank painted thick with flowers

that sloped to the white boughs of a great May tree. He was radiant in

his manhood, and his eyes burnt for her with such a splendour of pride

and tenderness that she trembled in thought for the secret she had kept

from him in her heart. He could know nothing of Gorlois, or he would

not have come thus to her. The mocking face of fate leered at her like

a satyr out of the shadows, yet with the joy of the moment she put the

thoughts aside and lived on the man's lips and the great love that

brimmed for her in his eyes.

Pelleas sat in the long grass at her feet and looked up at her as at

a saint. Never had she seen such glory of happiness on human face,

never such manhood deified by the holier instincts of the heart. The

sheer strength of his devotion carried her above her cares and made her

content to live for the present, and to gird time with the girdle of an

hour.

"You are no nun, Igraine?"

She smiled at him and shook her head.

"No, no, Pelleas."

"Would to God you had told me that a year ago."

"Would to God I had."

"It would have saved much woe."

Igraine hung her head. The man's words were prophetic in their

honest ignorance, and the whole tale had almost rushed from her that

moment but for a certain selfishness that held her mute, a fear that

overpowered her. She knew the fibre of Pelleas's soul. To tell him the

truth would mean to call his honour to arms against his love, and she

dreaded that thought as she dreaded death.

"I was a fool, Pelleas," she said, with a queer intensity of tone that

made the man look quickly into her eyes.

"You did not know."

"Pardon, Pelleas, I knew your soul, how true and strong it was. God

knows I tried you to the end, and bitter truth it proved to me. If you

had only waited."

"Ah, Igraine."

"Only a night; you would have had the truth at dawn."

"I struggled for your soul and for mine, as I thought."

"Yes, yes, you chose the nobler part, thinking me a mere woman, a frail

thing blown about by my own passion. I loved you, Pelleas, for the

deed, though it nigh brought me to my death."

"God knows I honoured you, Igraine."

"Too well; it had been better for us both if you had been more human."

There was an anguish of regret in her voice, a plaintive accusation

that made Pelleas wince to the core. He bent down and kissed her hand

as it lay in her lap, then looked into her face with a mute appeal that

brought her to the verge of tears.

"Courage, courage, dear heart."

"God bless you, Igraine."

"I am very glad of your love."

"Come now, tell me how the year has passed."

Igraine held his hand in hers and began to twist her hair about his

wrist into a bracelet of gold. Her eyes faltered from his, and were hot

and heavy with an inward misery of thought. The man's words wounded her

at every turn, and in his innocence he shook her happiness as a wind

shakes a tree.

"There is little I can tell you," she said.

"Every hour is as gold to me."

"Would I had them lying in my lap."

"We are young yet, Igraine."

There was a joyousness in his voice that sounded to the girl like a

blow struck upon empty brass, or like the laugh of a child through a

ruined house. His rich optimism mocked her to the echo.

"I took refuge in Winchester," she began, "with Radamanth my uncle, and

lodged there many months. I watched for you and waited, but got no news

of a knight named Pelleas. Week by week as my knowledge grew I began to

think and think, to piece fragments together, to dream in my heart. I

longed to see this Uther of whom all Britain talked. Ah, you remember

the cross, Pelleas, which you left at my feet?"

Pelleas smiled. She put her hand into her bosom with a little blush of

pride and looked into the man's eyes.

"I have it here still," she said, "where it has hung these many months.

This scrap of gold first taught me to look for Uther."

"Ah, Igraine, am I a king!"

"My king, sire. And oh! how long it was before I could get news of

you; yet in time tidings came. Then it was that I left Winchester,

went on foot through the land, and hearing again of you I set out for

Wales and Caerleon with rumours of war in my ears. Even from Caerleon

I followed you, even to the western sea, where I saw the great battle

with Gilomannius, and the noble deeds you did there for Britain."

Pelleas's dark eyes flashed up to hers. A man loves to be noble in deed

before the face of the woman he serves, a species of divine vanity that

begets heroes. The girl's staunch faith was a thing that proffered the

superbest flattery.

"You are very wonderful, Igraine."

"It was all for my own heart; and what greater joy could I have than to

see you a king before the thundering swords of your knights."

"You saw that, Igraine?"

"Do you remember a hillock by the pine forest on the ridge, where you

reined in after the charge and uncovered your head to the sun?"

"As it were yesterday."

"I stood on that hillock, Pelleas, and saw your face after many months."

"Ah, Igraine, said I not you were very wonderful?"

"No, no, I am only a woman, only a woman."

"God give me such a wife."

The word was keen as the barb of a lance. Pelleas's head was bowed over

the girl's hand as he pressed his lips to the gold circlet of hair, and

he did not see the frown of pain upon her face. Wife! What a mockery,

what bitterness! The sky seemed black for a moment, the valley bare

with the blasts of winter and the moan of tortured trees. She half

choked in her throat, and her heart seemed to fail within her like a

bowl that is broken. Yet there was a smile on her face when Pelleas

looked up from the circlet of her hair with the pride of love in his

large eyes.

"What ails you, Igraine?"

"A mere thought of the past."

"Tell it me."

"No, no, it is a nothing, a mere vapour, and it has passed. How warm

your lips are to my fingers. Tell me of yourself, Pelleas."

"But this armour, Igraine?"

"I took it from a dead knight, God rest his soul. I have wandered long

in Wales, yet ever drew to Caerleon where folk spoke your name, yet

never might I come near you, lest--lest you were too great for me."

"Child, child!"

"Uther Pendragon, King of Britain!"

"Let the world die."

"And let us live; Pelleas, tell me of yourself."

The man looked long over the valley in silence. His face was very

grave, and his eyes were deep with thought as though the past awed him

with the recollection of its bitterness.

"May I never pass such another night," he said.

The words were curt and calm enough as though leaving infinite things

unsaid. Igraine sat silent by him and still plaited her hair about his

wrist.

"I went away in the dark, for I thought you were a nun, Igraine, and

I would not break your vows. I was nearly blind for an hour. Twice my

horse stumbled and fell with me in the woods, and once I was smitten

out of the saddle by a tree. Dawn came, and how I cursed the sun. I

seemed to see your face everywhere, and to hear your voice in every

sound. Days came and went, and I hated the sight of man; as for my

prayers, I could not say them, and I was dumb in my heart towards God.

I rode north into the wilds, and into the fenlands of the east. Strange

things befell me in many places. I fought often, beast and wild men and

robber ruffians out of the woods. Fighting pleased me; it eased the

wrath in my heart that seemed to rage up against the world, and against

all things that drew breath. I wandered in the night of the forests,

waded through swamps, took my food by the sword, and never blessed man

or woman. I felt bitter and evil to the core."

Igraine bent down and touched his forehead with her lips.

"Brave heart," she said.

"You shall hear how I came by my own soul again."

"Ah, tell me that."

"It was as though a still voice came to me out of heaven. I was riding

in the northern wilds not far from rough coastland and the sea, and

riding, came upon a little house of timber all bowered round with

trees. It was a peaceful spot, flowers grew around, and the sun was

shining, and I drew near, moved in my heart to beg food and rest, for

I was half starved and gaunt as a monk from an African desert. What

did I see there? A dead man tied to a tree and gored with many wounds;

a woman kneeling dead before his feet, thrust through with a sword; a

little child lying near with its head crushed by a stone or a club. The

sword was a Saxon sword, and I knew who had done the deed; but sight

of the dead folk by their empty home seemed to smite my pity like the

thought of the dead Christ. I had pitied but myself and you, Igraine,

and had wandered through the land like a brute beast mad with the

smart of my own wound. Here was woe enough, agony enough, to shame my

heart. Straightway I went down on my knees and prayed, and came through

penitence and fire to a knowledge of myself. 'Rise up,' said the voice

in me, 'rise up and play the man. There is much sorrow in Britain, much

shedding of innocent blood, much violence, and much brute wrath. Rise

up and strike for woman and for babe, let your sword shine against the

wolves from over the sea, let your shield hurl them from the ruined

hearths of Britain, the smoking churches, and the children of the

cross.' So I rose up strong again and comforted, and rode back into the

world to do my duty."

When Pelleas had made an end of speaking, Igraine's eyes were full of

tears. The simplicity of the man's words had awakened to the full all

the pathos of the past in her, and she was as proud of him as when she

saw him hurl Gilomannius and his host down the green slopes towards the

sea. Her lips quivered as she spoke to him--looking into his face with

her eyes dim and shadowy with tears.

"Forgive me all this."

"It has been good for me, Igraine, nor would I alter the days that are

gone."

"No, no."

"We have found love again."

"Ah, Pelleas!"

"What more need we ask?"

"What more?"

Her voice was half a wail. Again it was winter, and the wind blew as

though at midnight; the flowers and the green woods were blurred before

the girl's eyes. Gorlois's hard face and the grey walls of Tintagel

came betwixt her and the summer. And, though the mood lasted but for a

moment, it seemed like the long agony of days crushed into the compass

of a minute.

Evening stood calm-eyed in the east. A tranquil heat hung over wood

and valley, a warm silence that seemed to bind the world into a golden

swoon. Not a ripple stirred in the grass with its tapestries of

flowers; every leaf was hushed upon the bough; nothing moved save the

droning bee and the wings of the butterflies hovering colour-bright

over the meadows. The sky was a mighty sapphire, the woods carved

emeralds piled giantwise to the sun. There was no discord and no sound

of man, as though the curse of Adam was not yet.

Igraine had drawn Pelleas's great sword from its sheath. She held it

slantwise before her, and pressed her lips to the cold steel.

"Old friend," she said, "be ever true to me."

Pelleas laughed and touched her hair with his hand. A kind of

exaltation came upon them, and the zest of life crept through the

bodies like green sap in spring. Igraine had filled her brazen helmet

to the brim with flowers, and she scattered them and sang as they

roamed into the hoar shadows of the woods:--

"Dear love of mine,

Where art thou roaming?

The west is red,

My heart is calling."

Never had the vaults seemed greener, the half light more mysterious

under the massive trees. The far world was out of ken; they alone lived

and had their being; the toil of man was not even like the long sob of

a moonlit sea, or the sound of rivers running in the night.

The infinite strangeness of beauty shone over them like a wizard light

out of the west. Igraine's lips were very red, her face white in the

shadows, her eyes deep with mute desire. Hand held hand, body touched

body. Often she would lie out upon Pelleas's arm, her head upon his

shoulder, her hair clouding over his red harness. They were content

to be together, to forget the world save so much of it as came within

the ken of their eyes, and the close grip of their twined fingers.

They said little as they swayed together under the trees. Soul ebbed

into soul upon their lips, and a deep ecstasy possessed them like the

throbbing pathos of some song.

As the day deepened Pelleas and Igraine turned back into the valley,

hand in hand. The west burnt gold above the tree tops, the gnarled

trunks were pillars of agate bearing Byzant domes of breathless leaves.

By the white May trees the two horses stood tethered, black and grey

against the grass. Loosing them, and taking each a bridle, they passed

down through flowers to the cottage and the pool.

Garlotte met them there with her brown hair pouring over her shoulders,

and a clean white kerchief over her throat and bosom. She came to

them through a little thicket of fox-gloves that were budding early,

white and purple. Her blue eyes quivered for a moment over Pelleas's

face as she made him a deep curtsey, and bent to kiss Igraine's hand.

There was a vast measure of sympathy in Garlotte's heart, and yet for

all her well-wishing she was troubled for the two, fearing for them

instinctively with even her small knowledge of the world. She had

learnt enough from Igraine to comprehend in measure that element of

tragedy that had entered with Gorlois into her life. Her interest in

the man Pelleas was no mere vulgar curiosity, rather an intense pity

that permeated her warm innocence of spirit to the core.

She had spread supper on the table, a much meditated feast that had

kept her eagerly busy since she had guessed the name of the strange

knight who had ridden down out of the woods. She had the pride of a

young housewife in her creamy milk, her bread. She had made a tansy

cake, and there was a rich cream cheese ready in the cupboard, and a

fat rabbit stewing by the fire. Yet for all her ingenuous pride she

felt much troubled when it came to the test lest her fare should seem

rude and meagre to the great knight in the red harness. Certainly he

had a kind face and splendid eyes, but would he not smile at her humble

supper, her horn cups, and her plates of hollywood? Her cares were

empty enough, but they were very real to the sensitive child who feared

to seem shamed before Igraine.

Half the happiness of life lies in the kindly sensibility of others

to our desire for sympathy. A surly word, a trivial ungraciousness,

a small deed passed over in thankless silence, how much these things

mean to a sensitive heart! Garlotte, standing in her cottage door, half

shy and timid, found her small fears mere little goblins of her own

invention. Igraine, radiant as the evening, came and kissed her on the

lips.

"Little sister, you have been very good to me."

The great knight too was smiling at her in quite a fatherly fashion.

What a strong face he had, and what a noble look; she felt sure that he

was a good man, and her heart went out to him like an opening flower.

When he took her hand, and a lock of her hair and kissed it, she went

red as one of her own roses, and was dumb with an impulsive gladness.

"Little sister, you have been very good to me."

"Good, my lord, to you!"

"Child, Igraine can tell you how."

"But the Lady Igraine, she saved my life!"

"Ah, I had not heard that. Tell me."

Garlotte found her ease in a moment. The whole tale came bubbling up

like water out of a spring. Pelleas's strong face beamed; he touched

Igraine's hair with his fingers and looked into her eyes as only a

man in love can look. Garlotte saw that she was giving pleasure, and

felt a glow from head to heart. Surely this great, grave-faced knight

was a noble soul; how gentle he was, and how he looked into Igraine's

eyes and bent over her like a tall elm over a slim cypress tree. She

caught the happiness of the two, and from that moment her heart was

singing and she had no more fear for herself and her poor cottage. Even

the horn cups took a golden dignity, and her tansy cake and her cream

seemed fit for a prince.

The three were soon at supper together round the wooden table, with

honeysuckle and roses climbing close above their heads. Garlotte would

have stood and waited on Pelleas and Igraine, but they would have none

of it; so she was set smiling at the head of her little table, and

constrained to play the lady under her own roof. It was a dull meal so

far as mere words were concerned. Pelleas's eyes were on Igraine in

the twilight, and he had no hunger save hunger of heart; yet that the

supper was a success there was no doubt whatever. Garlotte watched them

both with a quiet delight; young as she was she was wise in the simple

love of love, and so she mothered the pair to her heart's content in

her own imagination. If only Renan had been there to help her serve,

and touch her hand under the table, what a perfect guest-hour it would

have been.

When the meal was over she jumped up with a shy smile, took a rush

basket from the wall, and went out into the garden. Igraine called her

back.

"Where are you going, child?"

"Up the valley to the dead oak tree where herbs grow. I must make a

stew to-morrow."

"It will soon be dark."

Garlotte swung her basket and laughed from her cloud of hair.

"You gathered herbs on Sunday, Igraine."

"You squirrel!"

"Renan was here; you came home after dusk; good-by, good-by."

They heard her go singing through the garden, a soft _chant d'amour_

that would have gone wondrously to flute and cithern. It died away

slowly amid the trees like an elf's song coming from woodlands in the

moonlight. Pelleas drew a deep breath and listened in the shadow of

the room with his hands clasped before him on the table. He looked as

though he were praying. Igraine's eyes were glooms of violet mystery as

she watched him, her hands folded over a breast that rose and fell as

with the restless motion of a troubled sea. She called the man softly

by name; her body bent to him like a bow, her hair bathed his face with

dim ripples of gold as mouth touched mouth.

They went out into the garden together and stood under the cedar tree.

"Pelleas, my love, my own."

"Heart of mine."

"You will never leave me?"

"How should the sea put the earth from his bosom, or the moon pass from

the arms of the night?"

"I am faint, Pelleas; hold me in your arms."

"They are strong, Igraine."

"There, let me rest so, for ever. Look, the stars are coming out, and

there is the moon flooding silver over the trees. My lips burn, and I

am faint."

"Courage, courage, dear heart."

"How close you hold me! I could die so."

"What is death to us, Igraine?"

"Or life?"

"God in heaven, and heaven on earth."

"Your words hurt me."

XI

How the birds sang that evening as a saffron afterglow fainted over the

forest spires, and when all was still with the hush of night how the

cry of a nightingale thrilled from a tree near the cottage!

The glamour of the day had passed, and now what mockery and bitterness

came with the cold, calculating face of the moon. Igraine tossed and

turned in her bed like one taken with a fever; her brain seemed afire,

her hair like so much flame about her forehead. As she lay staring

with wide, wakeful eyes, the birds' song mocked her to the echo, the

scent of honeysuckle and rose floated in like a sad savour of death,

and the moonlight seemed to watch her without a quaver of pity. Her

heart panted in the darkness; she was torn by the thousand torments

of a troubled conscience, wounded to tears, yet her eyes were dry and

waterless as a desert. Gorlois's face seemed to glare down at her out

of the idle gloom, and she could have cried out with the fear that lay

like an icy hand over her bosom.

Pelleas slept under the cedar tree, wrapped in an old cloak, relic of

Garlotte's father. How Igraine's heart wailed for the man, how she

longed for the touch of his hand! God of heaven, she could not let him

go again, and starve her soul with the old cursed life. His lips had

touched hers, his arms had held her close, she had felt the warmth of

his body and the beating of his heart. Was all this nothing--a dream,

a splendid phantasm to be rent away like a crimson cloud? Was she to

be Gorlois's wife and nothing more, a bitter flower growing under a

gallows, sour wine frothing in a gilded cup?

God of heaven, no! What had the world done for her that she should obey

its edicts and suffer for its tyrannies? Gorlois had cheated her of her

liberty, let him pay the price to the fates; what honour, indeed, had

she to preserve for him? If he was a brute piece of lust, a tyrant,

a demagogue, so much the better, it would ease her conscience. She

owed no fealty, no marriage vow, to Gorlois. Her body was no more his

than was her soul, and a dozen priests and a dozen masses might as

well marry granite to fire. How could a fool in a cape and frock by

gabbling a service bind an irresponsible woman to a man she hated more

than the foulest mud in the foulest alley? It was a stupendous piece

of nonsense, to say the least of it. No God calling himself a just God

could hold such a bargain holy.

And then--the truth! What a stumbling-block truth was on occasions!

She knew Pelleas's intense love of honour, the fine sensibility of his

conscience, the strong thirst for the highest good, that made him the

victim of an ethical tyranny. If he had left her after Andredswold

because he thought her a nun, what hope now had she of holding him if

he knew her to be a wife? And yet for all her love she could not bring

herself to keep him wholly from the truth. For all her passion and the

fire in her rebellious heart she was not a woman who could fling reason

to the winds, and stifle up her conscience with a kiss. Besides, she

loved Pelleas to the very zenith of her soul. To have a lie understood

upon her lips, to be shamed before the man's eyes, were things that

scourged her in fancy even more than the thought of losing him. She

trembled when she thought how he might look at her in later days if a

passive lie were proven against her with open shame.

But to tell him of Gorlois, and the humiliation of that darkest hour

of her life! Could such a man as Pelleas serve her longer after such a

confession? He would become a king again, a stranger, a man set in high

places far beyond the mere yearning of a woman's white face. And yet,

it was possible that his love might prove stronger than his reason; it

was possible that he might front the world and frown down the petty

judgments of men. Glorious and transcendent sacrifice! She could face

calumny beside him as a rock faces the froth of waves; she could look

Gorlois in the eyes, and know neither shame nor pity.

Her mood that night was like the passage of a blown leaf, tossed up to

heaven, whirled over the tree tops, driven down again into the mire.

Strong woman that she was, her very strength made the struggle more

indecisive and more racking. She could not renounce Pelleas for the

great love she bore him, and yet she could not will to play a false

part by reason of this same great love. Her soul, like a wanderer in

the wilds, halted and wavered between two tracks that led forward into

the unknown.

Garlotte was sleeping in the far corner of the cottage. The girl

had given up her bed to Igraine, who envied her her quiet, restful

breathing as she lay and listened. In her doubt she called and woke

Garlotte from her sleep, hardly knowing indeed what she desired to say

to her, yet half fearful of lying alone longer in the night with her

own thoughts for company. Garlotte rose up and came across the room to

the bigger bed. She knelt down; two warm arms crept under the coverlet,

and a soft cheek touched Igraine's.

"Why are you awake, Igraine?"

The warmth of the girl's body, her quiet breathing, the sweep of her

hair, seemed to bring a scent of peace and human sympathy into the

moonlit room. Igraine put her arms about her, and drew her down to her

side. Their white faces and clouding hair lay close together on the

pillow.

"You are in trouble, Igraine?"

"How should I be in trouble?"

"You breathe like one in pain, and your voice is strange."

"Hush, Garlotte."

"Am I not right?"

"Pelleas must not hear us talking."

They were silent awhile, lying in each other's arms with no sound

save that of their breathing. Igraine's misery burnt in her and cried

out for sympathy; Garlotte, half wise by instinct, yearned to share a

trouble which she did not wholly comprehend, to advise where she was

partly ignorant. The girl felt a great stirring of her heart towards

Igraine, but could say nothing for the moment. Having no better

eloquence at command she raised her head and kissed the other's lips, a

warm, impulsive kiss that seemed as rich in sympathy as a rose in scent.

Igraine's confidence woke at the touch of the girl's lips; she hungered

even for this child's comfort, her simple guidance in this matter of

life and love. It was easy enough to die, hard to exist as a mere

spiritless Galatea devoid of soul.

"Garlotte!"

"Yes, Igraine."

"Imagine that you were married to a man you hated, and you loved Renan."

Garlotte raised herself in bed.

"And Renan loved you and knew nothing?"

"Yes."

"Would you tell Renan the truth?"

Garlotte remained motionless, propped on her two hands, and looking

out of the window into the streaming moonlight. Her brown hair touched

Igraine's face as she lay still and watched her. The room was very

silent, not a breeze seemed stirring, the roses athwart the window were

still as though carved in wood.

Garlotte spoke very softly, looking up with her face white and solemn

in the moonlight.

"I should tell Renan," she said.

"Why?"

"Because I love him."

"Yes--go on."

"I should not love him rightly in God's eyes if I kept him from the

truth."

The coverlet rose and fell over Igraine's bosom, and there was a queer

twisting pain at her heart.

"But if you were never to see Renan again?" she said.

"If I told him the truth?"

"Yes, child."

Garlotte dared not look into Igraine's face; her lips were twitching,

and her eyes were hot with tears.

"I do not know," she faltered.

"Think, child, think!"

"I should not tell him."

In half a breath she had contradicted herself with a little gasp.

"Yes, yes, I should tell him."

"The truth?"

"Because I should not be happy even with him if I were acting a lie."

Igraine gave a dry sob, and drew Garlotte down again to her side. They

lay very close, almost mouth to mouth, their arms about each other's

bodies.

"I love Pelleas."

"Yes, yes."

"I will tell him the truth."

"Ah, Igraine, it is best, it is best."

"But it will kill me if I lose him."

"Ah, Igraine, but he will love you all the more."

It was Garlotte who broke into tears, and hid her face in the other's

bosom. Igraine's eyes were as dry as a blue sky parched with a summer

sun, and her voice failed her like the slack string of a lute. The

moonlight slanted down upon them both. Before dawn they had fallen

asleep in each other's arms.

How many a heart trembles with the return of day; what fears rise with

the first blush of light in an empty sky! The cloak of night is lifted

from weary faces; the quiet balm of darkness is withdrawn from the

moiling care of many a heart. To Igraine the dawn light came like a

message of misery as she lay beside the sleeping Garlotte, and watched

the gloom grow less and less in the little room. This dawn seemed

a veritable symbol of the truth that she feared to look upon--and

recognise. The night seemed kinder, less implacable, less grave of

face. Day, like a pale justiciary, stalked up out of the east to call

her to that assize where truth and the soul meet under the eye of

heaven.

How different was it with Pelleas under the eaves of the great cedar.

He had slept little that night for mere wakeful happiness; the moon had

kept carnival for him above the world; at dawn the stars had crept back

from the choir stalls into the chambers of the night. He had known no

weariness, no abatement of his deep calm joy. His heart had answered

blithely to the dawn-song of the birds as though he had risen fresh

from a dreamless sleep. The day to him had no look of evil; the sky

was never grey; the flush in the east recalled no flashing of torches

over a funeral bier. He rose up in the glory of his clean manhood, the

strong kindliness of his great love. His prayers went to heaven that

morning with the lark, and the Spirit of God seemed like a wind moving

softly in the green boughs above his head.

Very early before it was light he had taken a plunge and a swim in

the pool, a swinging burst through the still water that had made him

revel in his great strength. He had come up from the pool like a god

refreshed, and had put on his red harness while the mists rose from the

valley, and the birds chanted in the ghostly trees. When the day was

fully awake he walked the grass-path in the garden like a watchman,

with the scent of honeysuckle and thyme in his nostrils, and a blaze

of flowers at his feet. As he paced up and down with his face turned

to the sky, he sang in a mellow bass a song of Guyon's, the Court

minstrel--

"When the dawn has come,

My heart sighs for thee and the gleam of thy hair;

Eyes deep as the night

When the summer sky arches the world."

So sang Pelleas as he paced the grass with his eyes wandering ever

towards the doorway of the cottage.

Presently Igraine came out to him, and stood under the shadow of the

porch. Her hair hung lustrous about a face that was white and drawn,

despite a smile. Certainly a haze of red flushed her cheeks when

Pelleas came up with a glory of love in his eyes, took her hands and

kissed them, as though there was no such divine flesh in the whole wide

world. How wonderful it was to be touched so, to have such eyes pouring

out so strong a soul before her face, to know the presence of a great

love, and to feel the echoing passion of it in her own heart!

After the barren months of winter, and the long bondage in Tintagel,

it seemed ah idyllic thing to be so served, so comforted. And was this

faery time but for an hour, a day, and no longer? Was she but to see

the man's face, to feel the touch of his hands, the grand calm of his

love, before losing him, perhaps for life? Her heart fluttered in her

like a smitten bird. And Pelleas, too, what a thrust lurked for the

man, a blow to be given in the name of truth. How could she speak to

him of Gorlois when he came and looked at her with those eyes of his?

Igraine had never felt such misery as this even in the gloomy galleries

of Tintagel. It tried her courage to the death to face Pelleas's

wistful gaiety, and the adoration that beamed on her from his eyes.

"Dear heart, it is dawn--it is dawn!"

Pelleas held her hands, and waited for her lips to be turned to his.

Instead, he saw lowered lids and quivering lashes, lips that were

plaintive, a face white beneath a wealth of hair.

"Ah, Igraine, you do not look at me."

Her eyes trembled up to his with a sudden infinite lustre.

"Pelleas!"

"Girl, girl!"

"Ah, I have hardly slept."

"Nor I, Igraine."

"I think I am worn out with thinking of you."

"Ha, little woman, you are extravagant; you will die like a flower even

while I hold you in my bosom."

Garlotte came out from the cottage, and was kissed by Pelleas on the

lips. The girl's eyes were red and heavy; she had been crying but a

moment ago in the shadow of the cottage room, and she was timid and

very solemn. Pelleas looked at her like a big brother.

"Come now, little sister," he said, with a rare smile; "methinks you

must be in love too by your looks."

"Yes, lord."

"Said I not so? You women take things so to heart."

"Yes, lord."

"What a solemn face, little sister!"

Garlotte mastered herself for a moment, then burst into tears and ran

back into the cottage. Pelleas coloured, looked troubled, glanced

at Igraine, thinking he had hurt the girl's heart with his words.

Igraine's face startled him as if the visage of death had risen up

suddenly amid the flowers. He stood mute before her watching her

starved lips, her drawn face, her eyes that stared beyond him with a

kind of cold frenzy.

"Pelleas, Pelleas!"

It was like the wild cry of a woman over her dead love. The sound

struck Pelleas with a vague sense of stupendous woe, a dim prophecy

of evil like the noise of autumn in the woods. Before he could gather

words, Igraine had turned and run from him as in great fear, skirting

the pool and holding for the black yawn of the forest aisles. Pelleas

started to follow her in a daze of wonder. Was the girl mad? Had love

turned her brain? What was there hid in her heart that made her wing

from him like a dove from a hawk?

By the trees Igraine slackened and turned breathless on the man as

he came towards her through the long grass. Her eyes were dim and

frightened, her lips twitching, and there was a bleak hunted look upon

her face that made her seem white and old. Pelleas's blood ran cold in

him like water; a vague dread sapped his manhood; he stared at Igraine

and was speechless.

The girl put her arm before her eyes and shook as she stood. Pelleas

fell on his knees with a cry, and reached for her hand.

"Igraine, Igraine!"

She snatched her arm away and would not look at him.

"My God, what is this, Igraine?"

"Don't touch me; I am Gorlois's wife!"

A vast silence seemed to fall sudden on the world. It might have been

dead of night in winter, with deep snow upon the ground and no wind

stirring in the forest. To Igraine, swaying in an agony with her arm

over her face, the silence came like the hush that might fall on heaven

before the damning of a lost soul to hell. She wondered what was in

Pelleas's heart, and dared not look at him or meet his eyes. God in

heaven! would the man never speak; would the silence crawl on into an

eternity!

At last she did look, and nearly fell at the wrench of it. Pelleas was

standing near her looking at her with his great solemn eyes as though

she had given him his death. His face seemed to have gone grey and

haggard in a moment.

"Gorlois's wife!" was all he said.

Igraine hung her head, shivered, and said nothing. Pelleas never

stirred; he seemed like so much stone, a mere pillar of granite misery.

Igraine could have writhed at his feet and caught him by the knees only

to melt for a moment that white calm on his face that looked like the

mask of death.

A voice that was almost strange to her startled her out of her stupor

of despair.

"How long have you been wed, Igraine?"

"Nine months, Pelleas."

The man seemed to be struggling with himself as though he strove after

the truth, yet could not confront it for all his strength. When he

spoke his voice was like the voice of a man winded by hard running. He

appeared to urge himself forward, to goad his courage to a task that

he dreaded. There was great anguish on his face as he looked into the

girl's eyes.

"I must speak what I know, Igraine."

The words seemed slow with effort. Igraine watched him in silence, full

of a vague dread.

"Gorlois has spoken to me of his wife."

"Say on, Pelleas."

Pelleas hesitated.

"The truth--tell me the truth."

She was almost clamorous. Pelleas plunged on.

"Gorlois told me how his wife was faithless to him, how she had fled

with Brastias, the knight who had ward over her at Caerleon. I never

knew her name until this hour."

The words might have fallen like the strokes of a lash. Igraine

stood and stared at the man, her open mouth a black circle, her eyes

expressionless for the moment, like the eyes of one smitten blind. The

full meaning of the words numbed her and hindered her understanding. A

babel of shame sounded in her ears. The sinister intent of the man's

accusation rose gradual before her reason like the distorted image of a

dream. She felt cold to the core; a strange terror possessed her.

"Pelleas, what have you said to me?"

Her voice was a mere whisper. Pelleas hung his head and said never a

word. His silence seemed to fling sudden fire into Igraine's eyes, and

her face flamed like a sunset. It might have been Gorlois who stood and

challenged the honour of her soul.

"Man, tell me what is in your heart."

Her voice was shrill--even imperious. Pelleas hung his head.

"Gorlois keeps poison for his wife," were his words.

Igraine's lips curled.

"A sword for Brastias."

"Generous man."

Pelleas was watching her as a prisoner watches a judge. He had a great

yearning to believe. Fear, anguish, anger, were in Igraine's heart,

but she showed none of the three as she stood forward and looked into

the man's eyes with a steadfastness no honour could gainsay.

"Pelleas!" she said.

"Girl!"

"Look into my eyes."

He did so without flinching. Igraine took his sword and gave it naked

into his hand.

"Listen! Gorlois told you a lie."

"Igraine!"

"Do you believe me, Pelleas? If not, strike with the sword, for I will

live no longer."

The man gave a sudden cry, like one who leaps over a precipice, threw

the sword far away into the grass, and falling on his knees, buried his

face in his hands.

XII

Igraine stood and watched Pelleas as he knelt in the grass at her feet

with his face hidden from her by his hands. She saw the curve of his

strong neck, the sweep of his great shoulders. She even counted the

steel plates in his shoulder pieces, and marked the tinge of grey in

his coronal of hair.

Calm had come upon her with the trust won by the confessional of

the sword. She felt sure of the man in her heart, and eased of a

double burden since she had told him the truth and brought him to a

declaration of his faith. She knew well from instinct that her honour

stood sure in Pelleas's heart.

Going to him, she bent and touched his head with her hand.

"Pelleas," she said very softly.

The man groaned and would not look at her.

"Mea culpa, mea culpa!" was his cry.

Igraine smiled like a young mother as she put his hands from his face

with a gradual insistence. It was right that he should kneel to her,

but it was also right that she should forgive and forget like a woman.

Yet as she stood and held his hands in hers, Pelleas hung his head and

would not so much as look into her face. He was convicted in his own

heart, and contrite according to the deep measure of his manhood.

Igraine touched his hair softly with her fingers, and there was a great

light in her eyes as she bent over him.

"Come, Pelleas, and sit by me under the trees, and I will tell you the

whole tale."

Never had she seemed so stately or so superb in Pelleas's eyes as she

stood before him that morning, strong and sorrowful with the burden

of her past. He knelt and looked up at her, knowing himself pardoned,

humbled to see love in the ascendent so soon upon her face as she

looked down at him from her golden aureole of hair.

"I am forgiven?" he said.

"Ah, Pelleas!"

"You have shamed me; I am a broken man."

He rose up half wearily and stood looking at her as though some

mysterious influence had parted them suddenly asunder. So expressive

were his eyes, that Igraine read a distant anguish in them on the

instant, and fathomed his thoughts, to the troubling of her own heart.

"Look not so," she said, "as though a gulf lay deep between us here."

"How else should I look at you, Igraine, when you are wife to Gorlois?"

"Never in my soul."

"How can that help us?"

Igraine winced at the words and took refuge in silence. She went and

seated herself at the foot of a gnarled oak. Pelleas followed her and

lay down more than a sword's length away, leaving a stretch of green

turf between, a thing insignificant in itself, yet full of meaning to

the girl's instinctive watchfulness. The man's face too was turned

from her towards the valley, and she could only see the curve of his

cheek and chin as she began to speak to him of that which was in her

heart.

"You know the man Gorlois?" she said.

Pelleas nodded.

"In Winchester Gorlois saw my face and straightway pestered me as

he had been turned into my shadow. By chance he had rendered me

service, and from the favour casually conferred plucked the right of

thrusting his perpetual homage upon me. I trusted Gorlois little from

the beginning, and trusted him less as the weeks went by. His eyes

frightened me, and his mouth made my soul shiver; the more importunate

he grew the more I began to fear him."

Pelleas shifted his sword and said nothing.

"A day came when the man Gorlois grew tired of courtesies, and would be

gainsaid no longer. It was in Radamanth's garden; we quarrelled, and

the man laid hands upon me and crushed me against the wall to thieve

a kiss. In my anger I broke from him and ran into my uncle's house.

The same night I fled to an abbey, the abbey of St. Helena, and left

Winchester in my dress at dawn."

Igraine could see the muscles of Pelleas's jaw standing out contracted

as though his teeth were clenched in an access of anger. He was

breathing deeply through his nostrils, and his hands plucked at the

grass with a terse snapping sound. These things pleased Igraine, and

she went on forthwith.

"I left Winchester on foot at dawn and travelled towards Sarum, for I

heard that Uther the King was there, and it was greatly in my mind,

sire, to see his face. An old merchant friend of Radamanth's overtook

me on the road; at a ford the horse he had lent me fell and twisted

my ankle. I was carried to Eudol's house, and lay abed there many

days, learning little to my comfort that Gorlois had ridden out and

was hunting me through the countryside. Recovered of my strain, and

fearful of Gorlois's trackers, I held on for Sarum through the woods,

and lodged the same night in a hermitage in a little valley. Here the

first piece of craft overtook me, for early in the morning outside the

hermitage I saw a knight ride by on a black horse, bearing red harness,

and armed at all points like to you."

Pelleas turned his head for the first time and looked at her as though

with some sudden suspicion of what was to follow. Igraine saw something

in his dark eyes that made her heart hurry. His face was like the face

of a man who fronts a storm of wind and rain with brows furrowed and

eyes half-closed. There was much that was threatening in his look, a

subdued ominous wrath like a storm nursed in the bosom of a cloud.

Igraine told the whole quaint tale, how she followed Gorlois in faith,

how she was led into the forest, bewitched there, and made a wife,

mesmerised into a false affection for the man by Merlin's craft. It

was a grim tale, with a clear contour of truth, and credible by reason

of its very strangeness. It was sufficient to manifest to Pelleas how

Igraine's strong love for him had lost her her liberty and made her the

victim of a man's lust.

When she had ended the tale Pelleas left the grass at her feet and

began to pace under the trees like a sentinel on a wall. His scabbard

clanged occasionally against his greaves. Masses of young bracken

covered the ground between the trees with a rich carpet of green, and

his armour shone like red wrath under the wreathing arcs of foliage.

His face was dark and moody with the turmoil of thought, but there

was no visible agitation upon him; nothing of the aspen, more of the

unbending oak. Igraine leant against her tree and watched him with a

curious care, wondering what would be the outcome of all this silence.

Down in the valley the pool glistened, and she could see Garlotte

walking in the cottage garden. How different was this child's lot to

hers. With what warm philosophy could she have changed Pelleas into a

shepherd, and taken the part of Garlotte to herself.

Presently Pelleas stayed in his stride through the bracken, and came

and stood before her, looking not into her face but beyond her into the

deeps of the wood.

"Tell me more, Igraine."

"What more would you hear from me?"

"That which is bitterest of all."

"God, must I tell you that!"

"Let us both drink it to the dregs."

Igraine's face and neck coloured rich as one of Garlotte's red roses,

and she seemed to shrink from the man's eyes behind the quivering

sunlight of her hair. She put her hands to her breast and stood in a

strain of thought, of struggle against the infinite unfitness of the

past.

Pelleas saw her trouble, and his strong face softened on the instant.

He had forgotten milder things in his grappling of the truth. Igraine's

red and troubled look revived the finer instincts of his manhood.

"Never trouble, child," he said; "I know enough of Gorlois to read the

rest."

But Igraine, as by inspiration, had come by other reasons for telling

out the whole to the last pang. She was at pains to justify herself

to Pelleas, nor was she undesirous of inflaming him against Gorlois,

her lord. She had wit enough to grasp the fact that Pelleas's wrath

might be roused into insurrection against custom and the edicts of the

Church. A volcanic outburst might throw down the barriers of man and

leave her at liberty to choose her lot. Moreover, her hate of Gorlois,

an iconoclastic passion, had crushed the reverence of things existing

out of her heart. A contemplation of her evil fortune had brought her

to the conviction that she was exiled from the sympathies of men, a

spiritual bandit driven to compass the instincts of a rebellious soul.

In her hot impulse for liberty and the justification of her faith, she

did not halt from making Pelleas feel the full malignity of truth. She

neither embellished nor emphasised, but portrayed incidents simply in

their glaring nakedness in a fashion that promised to inflame the man

to the very top of her desire.

Igraine's cheeks kindled, and she could not look at the man for the

words upon her lips. Pelleas's face was like the face of man in

torture. The woman's words entered into him like iron; his wrath

whistled like a wind, and the very air seemed tainted in his mouth.

What a purgatory of passion was let loose into the calm precincts of

the place! This burning vault of blue, was it the same as roofed the

world of yesterday? The feathery mounts of green dappled with amber,

and these flowers, had they not changed with the noon lust of the sun?

There was a rank savour of fleshliness over the whole earth, and all

life seemed impious, passionate, and unclean.

"My God, my God!"

The man's cry shook Igraine from her rage for truth. In her

confessional she had been carried like a bird with the wind. Looking

into Pelleas's face she saw that he was in torment, and that her words

had smitten him in a fashion other than she had foreseen. It was not

wrath that burnt in his eyes, only a deep grieving, a frenzy of shame

and anguish that seemed to cry out against her soul. A sudden stupor

made her mute. With a great void in her heart she fell down amid the

bracken with a sense of ignominy and abasement overwhelming her like a

deluge.

Pelleas stood and shut his eyes to the sun. A red glare smote into his

brain; love seemed numb in him and his blood stagnant. Prayer eluded

him like a vapour. Looking out again over wood and valley, the golden

haze, the torpor of the trees mocked him with a lethargy that smiled at

the impotence of man.

And Igraine! He saw her prone beneath the green mist of the fern

fronds, lying with her face pillowed on her arms, her hair spread like

a golden net over the brown wreckage of the bygone year. To what a pass

had their love come! Better, he thought, to have lived a king solitary

on a throne than to have wandered into youth again to give and win

such dolor.

His face was dark as he stood and looked at the woman's violet surcoat

gleaming low under the bracken. How symbolical this attitude seemed of

all that had fallen upon his heart--love cast down upon dead leaves!

Igraine had feared his honour. Pelleas feared for it in another sense

as he looked at the woman, and felt his pity clamouring for life.

He could have given his soul to comfort her if no shame could have

come upon her name thereby. As it was, some spiritual hand seemed at

his throat stifling aught of love that found impulse on his lips. A

superhuman sincerity chilled him into silence, and held him in bondage

to the truth.

A face stared up from the bracken, wan, tearless, and tragic. The

wistfulness of the face made him quail within his harness. He knew too

well what was in Igraine's heart, and the look that questioned him like

the look of a wounded hare. Her eyes searched his face as though to

read her doom thereon. There was no whimpering, no noise, no passionate

rhetoric. A great quiet seemed to take its temper from the silence of

the woods.

"Pelleas."

"Yes, Igraine."

"Tell me what is in your heart."

Pelleas hung his head; he could not look at her for all his courage.

She was kneeling in the bracken with her hands crossed over her breast

and her face turned to his with the white wistfulness of a full moon.

Pelleas felt death in his heart, and he could not speak nor look into

her eyes.

"Pelleas."

"Child."

"You do not look at me."

"Great God, would I were blind!"

The truth came crying to her like the wild cry of a bird taken by a

weasel in the woods. A great sobbing shook her; she fell down and

caught Pelleas by the knees.

"Pelleas, Pelleas!"

"My God, Igraine, I stifle!"

"Don't leave me, don't send me away."

"What can I say to you?"

"Only look into my eyes again."

Pelleas put his fists before his face; the girl felt him quiver, and he

seemed to twist in an agony like a man dangling on a rope. Igraine's

hands crept to his shoulders; she drew herself by his body as by a

pillar till her face met his and she lay heavy upon his breast.

"Pelleas!"

Her breath was on his lips, and her hair flooded over his hands like

golden wine.

"Pelleas, Pelleas!"

The words came with a windless whisper.

"Have pity, Igraine."

"I will never leave you."

"Gorlois's wife!"

"Never, never!"

"My God!"

"I am not his. Pelleas, take me body and soul; take me and let me be

your wife."

"How can I sin against your soul, Igraine?"

"Is it sin, then, to love me?"

"You are Gorlois's wife before God."

"There is no God."

"Igraine!"

"I will have no God but you, Pelleas."

The man took his hands from his face and looked into Igraine's eyes. A

strong shudder passed over him, and he seemed like a great ship smitten

by a wave, till every fibre groaned and quivered in his massive frame.

A green calm covered the valley, and the whole world seemed to faint

in the golden bosom of the day. Not the twitter of a bird broke the

vast hush of the forest. The sunlit aisles climbed into a shadowland

of mysterious silence, and an azure quiet hung above the trees. As for

Pelleas and Igraine, their two lives seemed knotted up with a cord of

gold. They had mingled breath, and taken the savour of each other's

souls. Yet for all the glory of the moment it was but autumn with

them--a pomp of passion, a red splendour dying while it blazed into the

grey ruin of a winter day.

Igraine read her doom in the man's face. It was the face of a martyr,

pale, resolute, yet inspired. A dry sob died in her throat, and her

hands dropped from the man's shoulders. Pelleas stood back and looked

at her with a warm light in his dark eyes, the green woods rising

behind him like a bank of clouds.

"Igraine."

She nodded, felt miserable, and said nothing.

"I cannot love you easily."

Igraine's eyes stared at him with a mute bitterness. She was a woman,

and thought like a woman; mere saintly philosophy was beyond her.

"You are too good a man, Pelleas," she said.

"I would hold my love in my heart like a great pearl in a casket of

gold."

"What comfort is there in mere splendid misery, and in such words?"

"How should I love you best?"

"Ah, Pelleas, ask your own heart."

The man was an impossible being for mere mortal argument. He seemed to

bear spiritual pinions that tantalised the intelligence of the heart.

Igraine felt herself adrift and beaten, and she was hopeless of him to

the core.

"Think you I shall be a saint, Pelleas," she said, "when you have given

me back to myself?"

"I shall pray for you."

"And for a devil!"

She gave a shrill laugh, and twined her hair about her wrist.

"Ah, Pelleas! you know not what you do."

"Too well, Igraine."

"You are too strong for me, and yet--and yet--I should not have loved

you so well if you had not been strong."

"That is how I think of you, Igraine."

"You love me more by leaving me."

"I love you more by keeping you pure before my soul."

A great calm had come upon Igraine. She was very pale and firm about

the lips, and her eyes were staunch as steel. Her voice was as clear

and level as though she spoke of trivial things.

"I shall not go back to Gorlois," she said.

"Beware of the man."

"Doubtless you would speak to me of a convent."

Pelleas fell into thought, with his dark eyes fixed upon her face.

"As a novice."

Igraine almost smiled at him.

"And not a nun?"

For answer he spoke three simple words.

"Gorlois might die."

The stillness of the woods seemed like the hush of a listening

multitude. A blue haze of heat hung over the rolling domes of

the western trees, and never a wind-wave stirred the long grass.

Mountainous clouds sailed radiant over ridge and spur, and it might

have been Elysium where souls wandered through meads of asphodel.

Igraine looked long over the valley with its stately trees, its

flowering grass and quiet pool in the meadows. She was vastly calm,

though her eyes were full of a woe that seemed to well up like water

out of her soul. She still twisted and untwisted a strand of her hair

about her wrist, but for all else she was as quiet as one of the trees

that stood near and overshadowed her.

"Pelleas," she said.

The man came two steps nearer.

"Go quickly."

"Igraine!"

"Man, man, how long will you torture me? I am only a little strong."

The calm of tragedy seemed to dissolve away on the instant. Pelleas

thrust his hands into the air like a swimmer sinking to his death. His

heart answered Igraine's exceeding bitter cry.

"Would we had never come to this!"

"I cannot say that, though my heart breaks."

Pelleas fell down and clasped her with his arms about the knees. His

face was hidden in the folds of her surcoat. Presently he loosed his

hold, looked up, took a ring from his hand and thrust it into her palm.

"The signet of a king," he said; "keep it for need, Igraine. Have you

money?"

"I have money, Pelleas."

"God guard you!"

Igraine was white to the lips, but she never wavered.

"Heaven keep you!" she said.

Her voice was hoarse in her throat, and she began to shiver as though

chilled by a sleety wind.

"Go quickly, Pelleas; for God's sake hide your face from me!"

"It is death; it is death!"

He sprang up and left her without a look. Igraine saw him go through

the long grass with his hand over his eyes, staggering like one

sword-smitten to the brain. He never stared back at her, but held

straight for the cottage and the cedar tree where his black horse was

tethered under the shade. She watched him mount and gallop for the

forest, nor did she move till his red harness had died into the gloom

of the trees.

XIII

Down through the woods that morning rode Gorlois on his great white

horse, with helmet clanging at saddle-bow, shield hung at his left

shoulder, spear trailing under the trees. He was hot, thirsty, and in

a most evil temper. His bronzed face glistened with sweat, and the

chequered webs of light flickering through the leaves flashed fitfully

upon his golden harness. Since dawn he had ridden the hills in the

glare of the sun till his armour blazed like an oven; it was June

weather, and hot at that; his tongue felt like wood rubbing against

leather; it was a damnable month for bearing harness.

Casting about over the hills he had come upon Garlotte's valley, and

seeing it green and shadowy, had plunged down to profit by the shade.

Since the Red Knight was lost to him, it was immaterial whether he rode

by wood or hill. On this account, too, Gorlois's temper was as hot as

his skin. He hated a baulking above all things; he was moved to be

furious with trifles, and like the savage who gnashes at the stone that

bruises his foot, he cursed creation and felt thoroughly at war with

the world. A grim unreason had possession of him, such a mood as makes

murder a mere impulse of the hand, and malice the prime instinct of the

heart.

As he rode with loose rein the trees thinned suddenly, and the forest

gloom rolled back over his head. Gorlois halted mechanically under the

wooelshawe, and scanned the valley spread before him under the brown

hollow of his hand. He had expected no such open land in this waste

of wood--open land with water, a cottage, sheep feeding, and horses

tethered under the trees. One of the horses tethered there was a black.

The coincidence livened Gorlois's torpid, sunburnt face with a cool

gleam of intelligence. He sat motionless in the saddle and took the

length and breadth of the valley under the keen ken of his black eyes.

The man swore a little oath into his peaked black beard. His face grew

suddenly rapacious as he stared out under the hollow of his hand. He

had seen a streak of red strike through the green wall far up the

eastern slope that fronted him, a scrap of colour metallic with the

hint of armour. It went to and fro under the distant trees like a

torch past the windows of a church. Gorlois's hand tightened on the

bridle. He watched the thing as a hawk watches a young rabbit in the

grass.

Betimes he gave a queer little chuckle, and turned his horse into the

deeper shade of the trees. He began to make a circuit round the valley,

holding northwards to compass the meadows. He cast long, wary glances

into the wood as he went; tried his sword to see that it was loose in

the scabbard; took his helmet from the saddle-bow, and let down the

cheek-pieces from the crown. Before long he kicked his stirrups away,

rolled out of the saddle, and tied his horse to an oak sapling in a

little dell. Going silently on foot over the mossy grass, stopping

often to stare into the sunny vistas of the forest, moving more or

less from tree to tree, he worked his way southwards along the eastern

slope. Streaks of meadowland and the glint of water showed below him,

and he heard the bleat of sheep far away, and the tinkling of a bell.

Presently the murmur of voices came to him through the woods. He

ventured on another fifty paces, then stopped behind a tree to listen.

There were two voices, he was sure of that: one was a woman's, and the

other had the sonorous vibration of a man's bass. Gorlois's eyes took a

queer, far-away look, and his strong teeth showed between his lips.

He worked his way on through the trees with the cautious and deliberate

instinct of a hunter. The two voices gained in timbre, character, and

expression. Their talk was no jays' chatter; Gorlois could tell that

from the emphasis of sound, and a certain dramatic melody that ran

through the whole. Soon the voices were very near. Going on his belly,

with his sword held in his left hand, he crawled like a gilt dragon

through a forest of springing fern. He crawled on till he was quite

near the two who stood and talked under the trees. Lying flat, never

venturing to lift his head, he crouched, breathing hard through his

nostrils and holding his scabbarded sword crosswise beneath his chin.

Gorlois's face, scarred and drawn as it was, seemed as he listened a

clear mirror for the portrayal of human passion. His black moustachios

twitched above his angular jaw; his eyes took a rapacious and glazed

look, and a shadow seemed to cover his face. He turned and twisted as

he lay, and dug the points of his iron-shod shoes into the soft ground

as though in the crisis of some pain. It was the woman's voice that did

all this for him. Every word seemed like the wrench of a hook in his

flesh, as he cursed and twisted under the bracken.

Presently he lay still again, as though to listen the better. He could

hear something of what was said to the man in the red harness, but the

main drift of their talk was beyond him. Pelleas! Pelleas! He squirmed

like a crushed snake at each sounding of the name. The bracken hardly

swayed as he crawled on some twenty paces and again lay still, with his

cheek resting upon the scabbard of his sword.

"Gorlois might die."

Gorlois heard the words as plainly as though they had been spoken into

his ear. A vast silence hung like thunder over the forest. Gorlois lay

as though stunned with a stone, his dry mouth pressed to the cold steel

of the sword. His eyes took a stubborn stare under the sweep of his

casque. With gradual labour he raised himself upon his elbows, drew his

knees up under his body, and lifted his head slowly above the sweep of

green.

The ground fell away slightly from where Gorlois knelt in the bracken,

and he could look down on the two who stood under the trees, while the

fern fronds hid his harness. He saw a woman in violet and gold, her

hair falling straight on either side of her face, and her arms folded

crosswise over her breast. He saw also the knight in red harness, with

his locked hands twisting above his head as in an agony, while his face

was hidden by his arm. A passionate whisper of words passed between the

two. Even when Gorlois watched, the man in the red harness jerked

round and fell on his knees at the woman's feet. Gorlois suddenly saw

his face; it was the face of Uther the King.

[Illustration: "LIFTED HIS HEAD SLOWLY ABOVE THE SWEEP OF GREEN"]

Gorlois dropped back under the bracken as though smitten through with a

sword. He lay there a long while with his head upon his arms. A sudden

breeze came up the valley, sounding through the trees, swaying the

green fronds above the man's harness, calling a gradual clamour from

the woods. The overmastering image of the King seemed to frown down

Gorlois for the moment, and he crouched like a dog--with the courage

crushed out of his soul.

Betimes Gorlois's reason revived from the stroke that had stunned it

for a season. Like Jonah's gourd a quick purpose sprang up and shadowed

him from the too hasty heat of his own passions. He was a virile

man, capable of great wrath and great resentment. Yet he was no mere

firebrand. His malice, strangely enough, was one-handed and reached out

only against the woman. For Uther he conceived a superhuman envy, a

passion that rose above mere bloody expiation by the sword. Gorlois had

the wit to remember the finer cruelties of a spiritual vengeance, the

gain of wounding the soul rather than the flesh. His malice was a thing

fanatical in itself, yet taken from the forge to be cooled and tempered

like steel.

When he lifted his head again above the bracken, Uther had gone, and

Igraine stood alone under the trees. She stood straight and motionless

as some tall flower, her hair falling like quiet sunlight, unshaken by

a wind. Her great beauty leapt out into Gorlois's blood and maddened

him. As she looked out over the valley, Gorlois, straining his neck

above the bracken, could see that she watched Uther as he went down

from her towards the pool. Even to Gorlois there was something tragic

about the solitary figure under the trees, a stiff, grievous look as

though woe had transformed her into a pillar of stone. To him the

affair seemed a mere assignation, a hazardous passage of romance.

Measuring the souls of others by his own morality, he guessed nothing

of the deeper throes that surged through the tale like the long moan of

a night wind.

Gorlois saw Uther and his black horse disappear into the opposing bank

of woodland. Viciously satisfied, he lay in the bracken and watched

Igraine, coming by a queer pleasure in considering her beauty, and

in the knowledge that her very life was poised on the point of his

sword. How little she thought of the man-dragon lying in his gilded

scales under the green of the feathery fronds. Gorlois felt a kind of

arrogance of ownership boasting itself in his heart. Certainly he held

a means more sinister than the sword wherewith to perfect his vengeance

and to preserve his honour. A very purgatory, bolgia upon bolgia,

stretched out in prospect for the souls of the two who had done him

this great evil. Gorlois made much of it, with a joy that was hard and

durable as iron.

Igraine stirred at last from her stupor of immobility. Walking

unsteadily, as though faint in the heat, she passed out from the

trees with their mingling of sun and shadow, and went down through

the long grass towards the pool and the cottage. Gorlois knelt in the

bracken, and watched her with a smile. There was little chance of her

escaping, and he could be as deliberate as he pleased over the matter.

He inferred with reason that the cottage served her as a lodging in

this woodland solitude, where she lay hid from all the world save

from Uther, whose courtezan she was. Gorlois laughed--a keen, biting

laugh--at the thought of it all. At least he would go back for his

horse and spear, and make a fitting entry before the woman who was his

wife.

Igraine, walking as though in her sleep, came into the cottage, and

almost fell into Garlotte's arms. The girl looked frightened, and very

white about the lips. She could find nothing in her heart to say to

Igraine; she helped her to the bed, and ran to the cupboard to get wine.

"Drink it," she said, the cup rocking to and fro in her hand.

Igraine did her best, but spilt much of the stuff upon her bosom,

where it made a stain like blood. She sat on the edge of the bed, and

looked into the distance with expressionless eyes. Her hands were very

cold. Garlotte chafed them between her own, murmured a word or two, but

could not bring herself to look into Igraine's face. From the valley

the bleating of sheep came up with a sudden wind, and the red roses

flung their faces across the latticed casement.

Igraine was looking through the window into the deep green of the

woods. She could see the place where Pelleas had left her, even the

tree under which she had stood when she had pleaded with him without

avail. How utterly quiet everything seemed. Surely June was an evil

month for her; had it not brought double misery--and well-nigh broken

her heart? And the end of it all was that she was to go back to a

convent, to grey walls, vigils, and the sounding of a bell. Even that

was better than being Gorlois's wife.

Suddenly, as she sat and stared out of the casement, her body grew

tense and eager as a bent bow. Her eyes hardened, lost their dreamy

look; the hands that had rested in Garlotte's gripped the girl's wrists

with a force that made her wince.

"Saddle the horse."

The words came in a hard whisper. Garlotte stared at her, and did not

stir.

"Child, never question me; be quick, on your life."

Igraine, a different woman in a moment, had started up and taken her

shield and helmet from the wall. Her sword was girded to her. Quick

as thought, she gathered up her trailing hair, thrust on the casque,

strapped it to the neck-plate under her surcoat. Garlotte, vastly

puzzled, but inspired by Igraine's earnestness, had hurried out with

saddle and bridle over her shoulder. As she ran through the garden, she

looked up to the woods and saw the reason of Igraine's flurry. A knight

had come out from the forest on a white horse, his armour flashing and

blazing in the noonday sun. He had halted motionless at the edge of

the woodland, as though to mark what was passing beneath him in the

valley.

Garlotte found Igraine armed beside her, as she stood by the grey

horse under the cedar, and tugged with trembling fingers at the saddle

straps. Bit and bridle were quickly in place. Igraine, moved by a

hurried tenderness, gripped Garlotte to her with both arms.

"God guard you, little sister."

"Where are you going, Igraine?"

"God knows!"

"Who is yonder knight?"

"Gorlois, my husband."

Igraine climbed into the saddle from the girl's knee. She dashed in

the spurs and went at a gallop over the meadows towards the south.

Gorlois's white horse was coming at full stride through the feathery

grass. The man was riding crosswise over the valley, bent on cutting

off Igraine from the southern stretch of meadows, and driving her back

upon the woods. It was Igraine's hope to overtake Pelleas, and to put

herself behind the barrier of his shield. Gorlois, guessing her desire,

drove home the spurs, and hunted her in earnest.

Igraine headed the man and won a lead in the first half mile. Her grey

horse plunged like a galley in a rough sea, and she held to the pommel

of her saddle to keep her seat. Gorlois thundered at full gallop in her

wake, the long grass flying before his horse's hoofs like foam. He had

thrown away his spear, and his eyes were set in a long stare on the

galloping horse ahead. The zest of the chase had hold of him, and he

used the spurs with heavy heel.

The green woods rolled down on them as the valley narrowed to its

southern end. Igraine had never wandered so far from Garlotte's

cottage, and the ground was strange to her, nor did she know how the

country promised. Riding at full gallop, she saw with a shudder of

fear a barrier of rock running serrate across her path and closing the

narrow valley like a wall. Gorlois saw it too, and sent up a shout

that made Igraine's hate flame up into a kind of rapture. To have

turned right or left up the steep grass slope towards the woods, would

have given back to Gorlois the little start she had of him. With a numb

chill at her heart she abandoned all hope of Pelleas, and turned to

face the inevitable, and Gorlois her lord.

The man came up like a wind through the grass, and drew rein roughly

some ten paces away. He laughed as he stared at Igraine, an uncouth,

angering laugh like the yapping of a dog. He looked big and burly in

the saddle, and the muscles stood out in his neck as he tilted his

square jaw and stared down at his wife. Igraine had not looked upon his

face since he had been smitten in battle. Its ugliness seemed to match

his soul.

Gorlois lifted up his voice and mocked her.

"Ha, my brave, you are trapped, are you? Mother of God, but you make

a good figure of a man. These many months I have missed you, wife in

arms. And you have served in the pay of my lord the King. Good service

and good pay, I warrant, and plenty of plunder. I will have that

harness of yours hung over my bed."

Igraine suffered him not so much as a word. She was furious, and in no

mood to be scoffed down and cowed by mere insolent strength. She looked

into Gorlois's libidinous face from behind the vizor of her helmet,

and thought her thoughts. Gorlois ran on in his mocking fashion. His

bronzed face gleamed with sweat, and a rough lascivious smile showed up

his strong white teeth to her.

"Ha, now, madame! deliver, and let us have sight of you. The King loves

your lips, eh! They are red, and your arms are soft. I warrant he found

your bosom a good pillow. Uther was ever such a solemn soul, such a

monk, such a father. It is good for the heart to hear of him knotted up

in a woman's hair."

Igraine shook with the immensity of her hate.

"You were ever a foul-tongued hound," she said.

"Am I your echo?"

"I wish you were dead."

"So said the King."

"So you spied on us?"

Gorlois set up a scoffing laugh, showing his red throat like a hungry

bird.

"And saw my wife the King's courtezan; ha, what a jest! Come, madame,

let us be going; your honest home waits for you. I will chatter to you

of moralities by the way."

He had hardly delivered himself of the saying, when Igraine's hand

clutched at the handle of her sword. She jerked the spurs in with her

heels. Her grey horse started forward like a bolt; blundered into

Gorlois; caught him cross-counter, and rolled his white stallion down

into the grass. Igraine had lashed out at the shock. Her sword caught

Gorlois's arm, and cut through sleeve and arm-guard to the bone. As he

rolled with his horse in the grass, she wheeled round, and clapping in

the spurs, rode hard uphill for the forest.

Gorlois, hot as a furnace, scrambled to his feet, and dragged his horse

up by the bridle. Half off the saddle, with empty stirrups dangling,

he went at a canter for the yawn of the wood. His slashed arm burnt as

though it had been touched with a branding-iron; blood dripped down

upon his horse's white shoulder. He was soon steady in the saddle

and galloping full pelt after Igraine, the ground slipping under his

horse's hoofs like water, the long grass flying like spray.

Igraine's horse lost ground up the slope; he had less heart than

Gorlois's beast, and was weaker in the haunches. By the time they

reached the trees, Igraine had twenty yards to her credit and no more.

She saw her chance gone, and heard Gorlois close in her wake, caught

sideways a glimpse of plunging hoofs and angry harness. Drawing aside

suddenly with all her strength, she let Gorlois sweep up on her flank

and pass her by some yards. Before he could turn, she rode into him as

fast as she could gather; her sword clattered on his helmet,--sparks

flew.

Gorlois wrenched round and put his shield above his head.

"By God,--hold off,--would you have me fight a woman?"

A swinging cut rattled on his shoulder-plate for answer.

Gorlois rapped out an oath and drew his sword.

"Hold off!"

His roar seemed to shake the trees. To Igraine it was the mere

meaningless threatening of a sea. She struck home again and again while

Gorlois foined with her; more than once she reached his flesh.

Gorlois's grim patience gave way at last; a clean cut drew spurting

blood from his shoulder.

"God curse you!--take it then."

He swung his sword with a great downward sweep, a streak of steel that

struck crackling fire from the burnished casque. Igraine's arm dropped

like a broken bough; for half a breath she sat straight in the saddle,

swayed, sank slantwise, and slid down into the long grass. Her horse

stood still at her side, looking at her with mild blue eyes.

Gorlois gave a queer short laugh. He looked frightened for the moment;

the flush of anger had passed and left him pale. He dismounted, bent

over Igraine, unstrapped her helmet. She was only dazed by the blow;

blood trickled red amid her hair, and her blue eyes stared him in the

face.

She lifted up a hand with a bitter cry of defiance.

"Strike, strike, and make an end."

Gorlois's grimness came back, and his eyes hardened.

"That were too good for you."

"Devil!"

"By God, I shall tame you--never fear!"