battle, of how he came to Avalon, and of how he was buried. The abbot
did not know who the man was whom he had buried, till Bedivere told him,
and Bedivere thought that he was King Arthur only because a company of
ladies had brought him. But Arthur himself had told Bedivere that he
was going to Avalon to be cured of his wound, and that some time he
might come again. And so, on a stone over the grave at Glastonbury,
they put the words:
*hic jacet Arthurus,
Rex quondam Rexque futurus.*
That is Latin and it means: 'Here lies Arthur, King that was and King
that shall be.' And so it was long believed that some time King Arthur
would come back to conquer the foes of England and to save the people.
Some said that he was taken away in the boat to some happy island, to be
cured of his wound and to wait for the time when England should need him
most. Some said that he was sleeping down under the ground, with his
knights, at Caerleon-upon-Usk, and others that he was in the enchanted
castle on the hill at Camelot. Some believed that he was a raven, flying
around the Cornish coast, and some that he was dead like other men, and
in his grave in the Abbey of Glastonbury."
[Illustration: The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey]
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*THE ABBESS AND THE MONK*
We did get back to Glastonbury at last, and this time we did not miss
seeing the abbey. We spent some time in tracing it all out from its
ruins. It was a great and beautiful church in its time. Now it has
been crumbling and falling for many years. Worse than that, the people
of the country about here, when they wanted stone for building, instead
of finding new stone, used to come and take some from the old abbey.
But, after all that time and men could do to it, much of it still
stands, and it is full of that sad, sweet beauty and stateliness that
nothing but a ruin ever has. The walls of St. Joseph's chapel still
remain, all covered with ivy, there is a good deal of the choir left,
and there are two of the great, tall piers that held the tower. Then,
some way off, there is the abbot's kitchen, still all but perfect.
We found the place, or thought we did, where Joseph of Arimathaea first
built his little church of wood and woven twigs. We tried to find the
spot where King Arthur was buried. That is not easy, but we hit upon a
place at last where we thought it must have been. When Henry II was
King a search was made for King Arthur's grave by his order. They found
it, they said, and Henry had a monument put over it. The monument is
gone now, probably carried away, like so much of the abbey, to build
stables, or something else just as noble and important, and there is
nothing left to show where it stood. If we were talking of history
instead of stories I might have something to say about this one of Henry
II. But, as it is, it may as well stand with the rest of them.
"There is one more story," I said, "that I must tell you while we are
here among these ruins. Then I shall have told you all that I set out
to tell, and we shall have made the journey that we set out to make.
"When the letter that Gawain wrote was brought to Lancelot he lost no
time in calling his knights and his army together and starting toward
England to help King Arthur. If the King could only have delayed that
last great battle, as he tried to do, Lancelot would have been with him
and all would have been well. But when Lancelot landed at Dover the
people told him that he had come too late. They told him of the battle
that had been fought there, in which Gawain was killed, and of the
greater battle that had been fought afterward far away in the West. All
that they could tell him of the King was that he was gone. Some said
that he was dead, and some that he had been carried away to Fairyland,
where he would live till his people needed him.
"Then Lancelot asked: 'Where is the Queen?'
"'She shut herself up in the Tower of London,' some one answered, 'to
save herself from Mordred. Then, when Mordred left London and came here
to meet the King, she left the Tower, too, and they say that she went to
some abbey and is living with the nuns.'
"Then Lancelot told Bors and the other knights who were with him to wait
at Dover while he went to find the Queen. He rode alone through the
country, asking at all the abbeys that he found, and at last he came to
Almesbury, the place that is now called Amesbury, where we went, you
know, on our way to Stonehenge. And at the abbey there he saw the Queen
walking in the cloister. She saw him too and came to meet him.
"'I have come,' Lancelot said, 'to take you from this place. The King
is gone from us now, and we shall never see him in this world again.
Come with me now to my own city. While the King was with us I did not
care whether I had a city. I thought it grander and nobler to be his
knight than to be King of all the world but England. You know, my
Queen, that I am King of Benwick. Come with me now and be my Queen
still, more my Queen than ever, the Queen of Benwick. It is a little
place, but my people love me, and they will love you, too.'
"'Lancelot,' said the Queen, 'we must not think of such things--I must
not. You must go back and rule your people well and make them
happy--yes, and be happy yourself, if you can--but I must stay here and
try to do a little good to the poor, and fast and pray, so that God will
forgive me and so that he will forgive you and let us see our Arthur in
another world, since we cannot in this. For, Lancelot, do you know that
it is because of us--because of me and of you--that our Arthur has gone
from us?'
"'No, no,' said Lancelot, 'it is not true. I will not let you say such
things of yourself, even though you say them of me. We did nothing that
was wrong, you and I. They charged us with some plot--I do not know
what it was, and they did not know themselves. Then I saved you and I
saved myself, as it was right that I should do. The King made war on
me. I made no war on him. I only guarded my knights and my people. I
would not even have fought with Gawain, only he would have it so. And
when I heard that the King needed me here in England I came back to help
him, and it was too late. But it was the traitors who brought all this
death and ruin.'
"'It was not that we did any wrong, Lancelot,' said the Queen, 'it was
that we did not do all that was right. You would rather be Arthur's
knight, you said, than to be King of all the world but England. Ah,
yes, but what of England? Did you never wish, even in your heart, that
you were King of that? Arthur had noble thoughts for the good of his
country and of his people, and you swore to be faithful in everything to
him and to help him. And so your thoughts, Lancelot, should have been
all for the King and for his people, and so should mine. And were they
so? Did you never forget these things and work and fight for your own
name and your own glory, instead of for the glory of the King and for
the good of England? You fought, too, many times, for my name and for
my glory, and I was foolish and let you do it, when my thoughts, too,
should have been all for him and for England. But here alone, since we
were all parted, I have had time to think, and I have seen more clearly
than I ever saw before. Lancelot, it is not the great sins of the
wicked people that bring ruin to the world; it is the follies and the
failings of those who should be most true and most faithful, and so help
and save the world, but do not do it. We were the nearest to the King, I
his Queen and you his greatest knight. We should have been as strong
and as firm in our faithfulness to him as he was to himself. If we ever
had selfish and vain thoughts, thoughts that were not for the King, for
a single hour, it was a worse wrong in us than the wrongs that those
poor, weak knights did when they let Mordred persuade them and lead them
against the King. Do you not know why you could not see the Holy Grail,
as Galahad and Percivale and Bors saw it? This was why. And they could
see it because in every thought and wish they were true to what they and
all of the Round Table swore to the King. And so, Lancelot, my own best
knight, as there is work for you to do among your people, go and do it,
but I must stay here and do a little good, if I can, and pray for you
and for myself, so that some time we may be nearer to the King than we
have ever been.'
"'If you are right,' said Lancelot, 'and you must be right--if you are
right in staying here and doing what you say that you will do, then it
is right for me, too. I will not go back to France. I will find some
peaceful place and some good man, some hermit perhaps, and ask him to
let me stay with him and do as you are doing. Pray for me sometimes, my
Queen, and I will pray for you always.'
"Now I can guess just what you think of all this. You think that
Lancelot had not done any wrong at all and that the Queen was a great
deal too hard on him. But I know that the Queen was right. Think over
all that she said again and you will know it too. The Queen and
Lancelot had stood next to the King for all these years. They had been
proud of him and proud that they were so near to him, and if they had
been steadfast in all that they did and said and thought, nothing could
ever have harmed him or his country while they all lived. But sometimes
they were weak and thoughtless, and then the King was left to work
alone. Though this was all that they had done amiss, it was enough.
"So Lancelot left the Queen and went on his way. And Guinevere stayed
there at Almesbury and lived with the nuns. She never left the abbey
except to walk a little way among the fields, in the woods, and along
the river that we saw when we were at Amesbury, or, more often, to carry
help or comfort to the poor or the sick.
"After she had been with the nuns for a time she became one of them, and
no one among them worked more than she for the people near who needed
help, and no one among them was loved more than she. And no one, even
of those who knew her best, could tell whether she was happy. But they
all knew that she was always gentle and patient, that she never said
that her work was hard, that she never seemed to wish for her old life,
and that the sick people watched for her and the poor people prayed for
her. And when the old abbess died they were all sure that no one could
take her place so well as Guinevere. And so, for what was left of her
life, Guinevere was abbess at Almesbury.
"When Lancelot rode away from Almesbury he felt that it was nothing to
him where he went. He felt that he hated courts and tournaments and
battle-fields now, and he wished only to find some place away from the
busy and noisy world, where he could live as the Queen was living. And
so he wandered here to Glastonbury. And when he found Bedivere here,
when Bedivere had told him all about the great battle, and when he had
shown him the grave in the chapel where he believed that King Arthur was
buried, then Lancelot begged the abbot to let him stay here and be a
monk with the rest of them as long as he lived. And the abbot and
Bedivere were both glad to have him stay. So Lancelot, too, lived his
life among his brother monks and among the poor and the sick, and they
all learned to love him, as, long ago, all the good knights in Arthur's
court had learned to love him.
"Bors and his fellows waited for Lancelot at Dover for a long time. At
last Bors sent the army back to France, with all the knights except a
few who were the best friends of Lancelot. With these he set out
through England to search for him. They searched for a long time and at
last they found him. And when they saw that he was a monk they said
that they would all stay at Glastonbury and be monks too.
"When Lancelot had been at Glastonbury for a long time he had a dream
one night. He dreamed that an angel stood beside him and said to him:
'Lancelot, take all your fellows here who were knights of the Round
Table to-morrow and go to Almesbury. When you come there the abbess,
Queen Guinevere, will be dead. Bring her here and bury her in the
chapel beside the King.' And twice more that same night Lancelot had
this dream.
"In the morning Lancelot told the abbot of his dream, and the abbot said
that it would be best for him to take his fellows with him and go to
Almesbury, as he had been told to do. So they all set out, and when they
came to the abbey at Almesbury the nuns knew who they were and why they
had come, without being told. For they said: 'Our abbess died not an
hour ago, and she told us that after she was dead the monk who used to
be Sir Lancelot of the Lake would come for her and would bury her at
Glastonbury, beside the King. She had been told of it in a dream.'
"So Lancelot and his fellows took the body of the Queen back with them
to Glastonbury. There they made another grave before the altar in the
chapel, beside the grave of King Arthur, and buried Queen Guinevere in
it.
"And after this was done Lancelot would scarcely leave that chapel. He
was there for nearly all of every day and much of every night, kneeling
over the graves of the King and the Queen and praying. He would eat
scarcely anything and he slept but little. And so he grew thin and pale
and weak. The abbot and his friends could not comfort him or make him
eat, and at last he told them that he should live only a little longer.
'When I am dead,' he said, 'take me and bury me in the chapel of my own
old castle of Joyous Gard. I would far rather lie here in your chapel,
near my King and my Queen, but years ago I made a vow that I would be
buried in Joyous Gard, and I must keep that vow, so take me there.'
"That night the abbot awoke some of the monks by laughing aloud in his
sleep. They went to the abbot's bed and he awoke and said: 'I have had
the most beautiful dream that I have ever had in my life.'
"'What was it?' said Bors.
"'I dreamed,' the abbot said, 'that I saw Lancelot in the midst of a
great company of angels. More angels there were than I ever saw of men
in an army. Some of them lifted Lancelot up and they all rose to
Heaven. I could see Lancelot's face as they went, and it was full of
peace and gladness. They came near the gates of Heaven and the gates
were opened for them and they all passed in. And as they passed I could
see the great light that shone out and I could hear voices singing, and
the gates were closed and then I awoke.'
"Then they all went to Lancelot's bed. He did not awake when they came
to him, as the abbot had done. He lay still and his face was full of
peace and gladness and he was dead.
"They took him the next day, all his friends and the abbot with them,
and they journeyed slowly till they came to Joyous Gard. There they
buried him and then they journeyed slowly back again to Glastonbury.
They did not talk much as they went, but now and then they spoke a
little, sadly, as people will at such times, of the older and happier
days. To Bors and to some of the others it seemed only a little while
since a hundred and fifty knights sat at the Round Table in the hall at
Camelot. Here were some of the knights of the Round Table still, but the
glory of it had passed away with the King and Galahad and Gawain and
Lancelot."
[Illustration: "On toward the gold and the purple in the west"]
*CHAPTER XIX*
*"REXQUE FUTURUS"*
We were at sea on our way home. We had left Southampton, where Arthur
embarked when he went to fight the Emperor of Rome, and all day we had
made our swift way west through the British Channel. When we came up on
deck after dinner we had just passed the Scilly Islands. Dark and rough
and hard they stood up out of the sea behind us, and a pale mist was
just beginning to wrap them around and hide them a little from sight.
Before us all the air was clear. The sun was just setting and was
filling the sky with a dozen lovely hues of rose and violet and turning
the water into tossing and tumbling gold.
"See," I said, "there are the Scilly Islands. They are all that is left
of that lost land of Lyonnesse, Tristram's country, that used to reach
from here back to the Land's End. The rest of it is sunk deep down
under the water. This is all of Lyonnesse that we can ever see."
Helen did not seem to care very greatly even for this. She was thinking
of the last of our stories. "Was King Arthur really buried," she said,
"there in the Abbey of Glastonbury?"
"It is not easy to answer that," I said. "It seems to me that I have
read enough books about King Arthur to fill this ship, yet I never could
see that the writers of them had settled among themselves whether he was
buried there or not. If we care to believe that he was, I think we may
as well believe it."
"But do you believe it?"
"Yes, I believe it."
"Then he never came back, the way he said he would, and the way the
people believed he would?"
"No, he never came back."
"And he never will come back, the way the stories said?"
"Oh, yes, I think he will."
For a few minutes Helen watched the water that was whirling by the side
of the ship and I looked at the colors of the sea and the sky, that were
growing brighter still. Then she said: "But if King Arthur really died
and really was buried at Glastonbury and the three Queens didn't cure
his wound at all, how can he come back?"
"I don't know whether I can make you see it quite as I do," I said, "but
I will try. You know what it was that King Arthur tried to do. I have
told you all these stories very badly, if you do not. He tried to save
his people from the harms and the wrongs that they suffered. He tried
to make all of them, the rich and the poor, the lords and the common
people, good and brave and strong, true and gentle and noble. And he
did make them better and happier than they were before. But the time
had not come for all that he wished. After he passed away things got to
be as bad almost, as they had been before. Some people, here in our own
time, think that the world is not growing any better. That is because
they look back only a few years, perhaps a hundred, and they do not see
any change. There has been a change, though they do not see it. But
they would see it, if they would look back to those fearful old days
before Arthur came, yes, or half way back, for there were days then that
were not much better. They would see then how selfish and how cruel men
were and what wicked and heartless things they would do for a little
power or a little gain.
"This was what Arthur tried to change, and he did change it partly, for
a little while. But it was too soon to change it altogether. When he
was gone everything soon came to be nearly as it was before. Yet it was
never quite the same again, perhaps. Other good men came, not with the
strength of Arthur, yet with a strength of their own. And they passed
away too and left England and the world a little better than they had
found them. Slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely, men have thought
more, learned more, worked more, and so, slowly and slowly, yet surely
and surely, they have grown wiser and juster and stronger, and so, too,
they have grown freer and better and happier.
"The men of England and of our own country and of all the world are not
yet what Arthur would have had them. They are still far from it,
perhaps, yet they are nearer to it, and they are always getting nearer
still. The way is long and it seems hopeless, sometimes, but it is not
hopeless. And in some great, good time, far off, when this England and
our own country and all the world come to be as just and noble and happy
as Arthur tried to make his people--then cannot men say: 'King Arthur is
not dead any more; he has come back and is among us again, for it is his
will that guides us and it is his law that rules us now?' Do you see
now how Arthur did not die, but only passed away, to come again? And do
you see how he may come again, even though they buried him there at
Glastonbury?"
"I don't know," Helen said, after she had thought for a minute. "I
don't think I quite understand it, and any way, I would rather you would
tell stories than talk like that."
But I had no more stories to tell just then, and so we only stood and
watched the water and the sky, while the ship carried us along, farther
and farther away from the dim, dark rocks, with the fog around them, and
on toward the gold and the purple in the west.
* * * * * * * *
*Charles Scribner's Sons'*
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