Uther and Igraine/Book 1/10

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WITH the girl's face lost behind the green eaves of the bower, Pelleas fell of a sudden into great darkness of soul. It was as though the moon had passed behind a cloud, and left him agrope in the woods without light and without guide. Igraine had bidden him to go and sleep. She might as well have told the sea to be still in the lap of the wind.

Going aside towards the mouth of the glade so that he might not disturb the girl, he began to tread the grass between brake and brake, while he held parley with his turbulent and seething thoughts. What was Igraine to be to him on the morrow? She had broken the back of his determination, and beaten down his strength in those grand moments of sudden passion. The rich June of her beauty was still on his sight. Her grace, her infinite tenderness, the purity of her, were all set about his soul like angels round a dreamer's bed. She was light and darkness, sound and silence; she had the round world in her red heart, and the stars seemed to go about her in companies of gold. Never had Pelleas thought idolatry so smooth and swift a sin. He had never believed that love in so brief a space could make such wrack of madness in a hale and healthy body.

As he walked under the giant limbs of the great trees he tried to grapple the thing with reason, to untangle this knot by natural logic. These were the bleak facts, and. they stood up like white headstones in the night. He loved Igraine, and Igraine he knew loved him in turn; but Igraine was a nun despite her womanliness, and there lay the core of the whole matter. If he obeyed love he must disgrace the girl with broken vows, for like a staunchly taught Christian of somewhat stern and primitive mould he stood in honest awe of things spiritual and ecclesiastic. His very love for the girl made him fearful of in any way dishonouring her. If he held to the trite observations of a prompted conscience, then he must forswear love, and leave Igraine to the miserable celibacy of the Church, that chrysalid state that never burgeons into the fuller, fairer life of perfect womanhood. These were the two forces that held him shaken in the balance.

Long while he went east and west under the trees with the old gloom flooding back like thunder. His whole thought seemed warped into bitterness; the blatant mockery of it all grinned and screamed like a harpy. Again with clarion cry and rosy flush of banners love stormed in and held law at death's door for a season. Again came the inevitable repulse, the moaning lapse of desire, while the black banner of the Church flapped once more over him in dismal sanctity. Pelleas found no shred of peace wheresoever he looked. Who has not learnt that when anarchy is in the heart, the whole world seems out of gear?

As the night passed, love seemed to faint and wax pale before an ever-darkening visage that declared despair. A sense of inevitable gloom seemed to weigh down desire, and to drown hope in misery. Pelleas grew calmer at heart, though his thoughts were no less woeful. Love's voice, stifled and wistful, came like an elfin voice through woods, while the cry of conscience was like the thundering surge of the wind through trees. He grew less restless, more apathetic. Coming to a halt he leant against an oak's bossy trunk, and stood motionless as in a stupor for an hour or more. The blight of soul-sickness was on him, and he was like one dazed by a great fever.

Presently he went back slowly to Igraine's shelter of boughs, and stood near it--thinking. Then he dropped on his hands and knees, crept up close, and parting the leaves looked in on her as she slept, wrapped in his red cloak. He could see her face indistinctly white in a wealth of shadows; he could hear her breathing. Then he crept away again like a wounded thing, and lay for a time with his face in his arms, grieving without a sound.

Again, a second time, he crept to the bower, and listened there on his knees. Turning his face to the night he tried to pray, vainly indeed, for his heart seemed dumb. A corner of Igraine's gown lay near his hands at the entry; he went down on hands and knees and kissed it. Then he took the little gold cross from his bosom, the cross Morgan had held, and laid it on the grass at Igraine's feet. He also put a purse with a few gold coins in it beside the cross. When he had done this he crept away mutely, and began to arm in silence.

Once, as he was buckling on his casque, he thought he heard Igraine stirring. He kept very still, with a sudden, wild wish in his heart that she would wake and save him, but the sound proved nothing. He finished buckling on his harness, girded his sword, and hung his shield about his neck. Then he went to the little pool, and, kneeling down, dashed water in his face, and drank from his palms. He felt faint and bruised after the night's battle.

Once more he went and stood by the hazel shelter as though for a last leave-taking before the strong wrench came. The little pavilion of leaves seemed to hold all hope and human joy in its narrow compass. Pelleas stood and took long leave of the girl in his heart. He wished her all the fair fortune he could think of, prayed for her as well as he could in a broken, wounded way, and then with a great sob he turned and left her sleeping. His black horse was tethered not far away. As he went he staggered, and seemed blind for a moment. He soon had the girths tightened, and was in the saddle, riding away dry-eyed and broken-souled into the night.

Presently the dawn came, redly, gloriously, like a marriage pageant. Igraine, reft from dreams, woke with a little shiver of joy in her pavilion of green boughs. She lay still awhile, and let her thoughts dance like the motes in the shimmer of sunlight that stole in between the branches. The day seemed warm and glorious, for that morning was she not to tell Pelleas of the secret she had kept from him so many days, the words she had hoarded in her heart like love? It would be a fitting end, she thought, to the rare novitiate each had passed in the heart of the other.

Hearing no stir about her shelter, she thought Pelleas asleep, and peeped out presently between the boughs to bid him wake. Glade and pool lay peacefully in green and silver, but she saw no knight sleeping, no war-horse standing under the trees. Starting up, the gold cross glinting on the grass, with the purse beside it, appealed her with mute tragedy. She caught them up, trembling, and with sudden fear in her heart she went out into the glade and searched from brake to brake. It was barren as her joy. Pelleas had gone.