The tale records that it was not a great while before, in simple
justice to Guenevere, Duke Jurgen had afforded her the advantage of
frank conversation in actual privacy. For conventions have to be
regarded, of course. Thus the time of a princess is not her own, and
at any hour of day all sorts of people are apt to request an
audience just when some most improving conversation is progressing
famously: but the Hall of Judgment stood vacant and unguarded at
night.
"But I would never consider doing such a thing," said Guenevere:
"and whatever must you think of me, to make such a proposal!"
"That too, my dearest, is a matter which I can only explain in
private."
"And if I were to report your insolence to my father--"
"You would annoy him exceedingly: and from such griefs it is our
duty to shield the aged."
"And besides, I am afraid."
"Oh, my dearest," says Jurgen, and his voice quavered, because his
love and his sorrow seemed very great to him: "but, oh, my dearest,
can it be that you have not faith in me! For with all my body and
soul I love you, as I have loved you ever since I first raised your
face between my hands, and understood that I had never before known
beauty. Indeed, I love you as, I think, no man has ever loved any
woman that lived in the long time that is gone, for my love is
worship, and no less. The touch of your hand sets me to trembling,
dear; and the look of your gray eyes makes me forget there is
anything of pain or grief or evil anywhere: for you are the
loveliest thing God ever made, with joy in the new skill that had
come to His fingers. And you have not faith in me!"
Then the Princess gave a little sobbing laugh of content and
repentance, and she clasped the hand of her grief-stricken lover.
"Forgive me, Jurgen, for I cannot bear to see you so unhappy!"
"Ah, and what is my grief to you!" he asks of her, bitterly.
"Much, oh, very much, my dear!" she whispered.
So in the upshot Jurgen was never to forget that moment wherein he
waited behind the door, and through the crack between the half-open
door and the door-frame saw Guenevere approach irresolutely, a
wavering white blur in the dark corridor. She came to talk with him
where they would not be bothered with interruptions: but she came
delightfully perfumed, in her night-shift, and in nothing else.
Jurgen wondered at the way of these women even as his arms went
about her in the gloom. He remembered always the feel of that warm
and slender and yielding body, naked under the thin fabric of the
shift, as his arms first went about her: of all their moments
together that last breathless minute before either of them had
spoken stayed in his memory as the most perfect.
And yet what followed was pleasant enough, for now it was to the
wide and softly cushioned throne of a king, no less, that Guenevere
and Jurgen resorted, so as to talk where they would not be bothered
with interruptions. The throne of Gogyrvan was perfectly dark, under
its canopy, in the unlighted hall, and in the dark nobody can see
what happens.
Thereafter these two contrived to talk together nightly upon the
throne of Glathion: but what remained in Jurgen's memory was that
last moment behind the door, and the six tall windows upon the east
side of the hall, those windows which were of commingled blue and
silver, but were all an opulent glitter, throughout that time in the
night when the moon was clear of the tree-tops and had not yet risen
high enough to be shut off by the eaves. For that was all which
Jurgen really saw in the Hall of Judgment. There would be a brief
period wherein upon the floor beneath each window would show a
narrow quadrangle of moonlight: but the windows were set in a wall
so deep that this soon passed. On the west side were six windows
also, but about these was a porch; so no light ever came from the
west.
Thus in the dark they would laugh and talk with lowered voices.
Jurgen came to these encounters well primed with wine, and in
consequence, as he quite comprehended, talked like an angel, without
confining himself exclusively to celestial topics. He was often
delighted by his own brilliance, and it seemed to him a pity there
was no one handy to take it down: so much of his talking was
necessarily just a little over the head of any girl, however
beautiful and adorable.
And Guenevere, he found, talked infinitely better at night. It was
not altogether the wine which made him think that, either: the girl
displayed a side she veiled in the day time. A girl, far less a
princess, is not supposed to know more than agrees with a man's
notion of maidenly ignorance, she contended.
"Nobody ever told me anything about so many interesting matters.
Why, I remember--" And Guenevere narrated a quaintly pathetic little
story, here irrelevant, of what had befallen her some three or four
years earlier. "My mother was living then: but she had never said a
word about such things, and frightened as I was, I did not go to
her."
Jurgen asked questions.
"Why, yes. There was nothing else to do. I cannot talk freely with
my maids and ladies even now. I cannot question them, that is: of
course I can listen as they talk among themselves. For me to do more
would be unbecoming in a princess. And I wonder quietly about so
many things!" She educed instances. "After that I used to notice the
animals and the poultry. So I worked out problems for myself, after
a fashion. But nobody ever told me anything directly."
"Yet I dare say that Thragnar--well, the Troll King, being very
wise, must have made zoology much clearer."
"Thragnar was a skilled enchanter," says a demure voice in the dark;
"and through the potency of his abominable arts, I can remember
nothing whatever about Thragnar."
Jurgen laughed, ruefully. Still, he was tolerably sure about
Thragnar now.
So they talked: and Jurgen marvelled, as millions of men had done
aforetime, and have done since, at the girl's eagerness, now that
barriers were down, to discuss in considerable detail all such
matters as etiquette had previously compelled them to ignore. About
her ladies in waiting, for example, she afforded him some very
curious data: and concerning men in general she asked innumerable
questions that Jurgen found delicious.
Such innocence combined--upon the whole--with a certain moral
obtuseness, seemed inconceivable. For to Jurgen it now appeared that
Guenevere was behaving with not quite the decorum which might fairly
be expected of a princess. Contrition, at least, one might have
looked for, over this hole and corner business: whereas it worried
him to note that Guenevere was coming to accept affairs almost as a
matter of course. Certainly she did not seem to think at all of any
wickedness anywhere: the utmost she suggested was the necessity of
being very careful. And while she never contradicted him in these
private conversations, and submitted in everything to his judgment,
her motive now appeared to be hardly more than a wish to please him.
It was almost as though she were humoring him in his foolishness.
And all this within six weeks! reflected Jurgen: and he nibbled his
finger-nails, with a mental side-glance toward the opinions of King
Gogyrvan Gawr.
But in daylight the Princess remained unchanged. In daylight Jurgen
adored her, but with no feeling of intimacy. Very rarely did
occasion serve for them to be actually alone in the day time. Once
or twice, though, he kissed her in open sunlight: and then her eyes
were melting but wary, and the whole affair was rather flat. She did
not repulse him: but she stayed a princess, appreciative of her
station, and seemed not at all the invisible person who talked with
him at night in the Hall of Judgment.
Presently, by common consent, they began to avoid each other by
daylight. Indeed, the time of the Princess was now pre-occupied: for
now had come into Glathion a ship with saffron colored sails, and
having for its figure-head a dragon that was painted with thirty
colors. Such was the ship which brought Messire Merlin Ambrosius and
Dame Anaïtis, the Lady of the Lake, with a great retinue, to fetch
young Guenevere to London, where she was to be married to King
Arthur.
First there was a week of feasting and tourneys and high mirth of
every kind. Now the trumpets blared, and upon a scaffolding that was
gay with pennons and smart tapestries King Gogyrvan sat nodding and
blinking in his brightest raiment, to judge who did the best: and
into the field came joyously a press of dukes and earls and barons
and many famous knights, to contend for honor and a trumpery chaplet
of pearls.
Jurgen shrugged, and honored custom. The Duke of Logreus acquitted
himself with credit in the opening tournament, unhorsing Sir Dodinas
le Sauvage, Earl Roth of Meliot, Sir Epinogris, and Sir Hector de
Maris: then Earl Damas of Listenise smote like a whirlwind, and
Jurgen slid contentedly down the tail of his fine horse. His part in
the tournament was ended, and he was heartily glad of it. He
preferred to contemplate rather than share in such festivities: and
he now followed his bent with a most exquisite misery, because he
considered that never had any other poet occupied a situation more
picturesque.
By day he was the Duke of Logreus, which in itself was a notable
advance upon pawnbroking: after nightfall he discounted the peculiar
privileges of a king. It was the secrecy, the deluding of everybody,
which he especially enjoyed: and in the thought of what a monstrous
clever fellow was Jurgen, he almost lost sight of the fact that he
was miserable over the impending marriage of the lady he loved.
Once or twice he caught the tail-end of a glance from Gogyrvan's
bright old eye. Jurgen by this time abhorred Gogyrvan, as a person
of abominably unjust dealings.
"To take no better care of his own daughter," Jurgen considered, "is
infamous. The man is neglecting his duties as a father, and to do
that is not fair."
16.