Uther and Igraine/Book 1/9

IX

PELLEAS and Igraine were stirring soon after dawn on the morning of their sally for Winchester. It was a summer dawn, still and stealthy; the meadows were full of a shimmering mist, the mere spirit-wrapped, and dappled here and there with gold.

Silent and distraught they made their last meal in the quiet manor. Everything seemed sad and solemn, as though the stones could grieve; the lilies by the impluvium seemed adroop, and the flowers about Pelleas's bed were withered. After the meal Pelleas armed himself, and went to harness his horse, while Igraine put up bread and foodstuff into a linen cloth for their journey. Before sallying they went all round the manor, into the chapel, where they prayed before the altar, into bower, parlour, and viridarium. The porch with its empty bed and withered flowers they took leave of last. There was such wistfulness there that even the dumb things seemed to cry out in pain.

Pelleas closed the gates with bowed head, and made the sign of the cross upon them with the pommel of his dagger. His throat seemed full of one great muffled sob. Together they wandered for the last time through the garden, while Igraine plucked some flowers for a keepsake. Pelleas felt that he loved every leaf in the place like his own soul. Then they went down to the water's edge, and, getting the horse on board, they loosed the barge from the bank, and came slowly to the nether shore. It might have been the fury of death, so stark and solemn was Pelleas's face.

Before turning their backs and riding away, they stood and looked long at the place girdled with its quiet waters. The great cedar slept there with a hood of mist over his green poll. Like a dream island it seemed, plucked by magic from some southern sea, fair with all fairness. Anon, despite their grieving, the last strand cracked, and the wrench was done. They were holding over vapoury meadows with their faces to the west.

Pelleas was very stoical that morning. As a matter of fact he had been awake all night, couched with misery and with thoughts that wounded him. All night through the lagging hours he had tossed and turned, cursing his destiny in his heart--too bitter for any prayer. What mockery that he who had passed so long unscathed should fall into hopeless homage to a nun. Desperate, he left his bed in the dark, and made the garden a dim cloister until dawn. Yet in the rack of struggle a clear voice had come to touch and dominate his being, and day had found him steadfast. He would hold to the truth, he vowed, do his duty, and let God judge of the measure of his gratitude. He could obey, but not with humility; he could suffer, but not with resignation.

It was after such a night in the furnace of struggle that he forged his temper for the days to come. He had thought to meet love with a stark hardihood, to talk lightly, to go with unruffled brow while his heart hungered. Nothing should move him to any emotion. He would meet destiny like a rock, let surges beat and melt back to the sea. It was better thus, he thought, than to go moaning for the moon.

Such was the determination that met Igraine's lighter humour that morning. She could make nothing of the man as she rode before him. He was bleak, dismal, yet striving to seem contented with their lot, now conjuring up a withered smile, now lapsing into interminable silence. His eyes were stern in measure, but there was the old light in them when she looked deeply, and the staunch flame was there still. After all, Pelleas's quiet humour did not trouble her very vastly. She had her own reading of the riddle, and a word in her heart that could unlock his trouble. Moreover, she was more than inclined to put him to such a test as should bring his manhood to a splendid trial. Perhaps there was some imp of vanity deep down in her woman's heart. At all events, she suited herself to the occasion, and passed much of the time in thought.

A ride of some seventy miles lay before them before they should come to the gates of Winchester. Much of that region was wild forestland and moor, bleak wastes of scrub let into woods and gloom. Occasional meadows, and rare acres of glebe ringing some rude hamlet, broke the shadowy desolation of the land. Great oaks, gnarled, vast, and terrible, held giant sway amid the huddled masses of the lesser folk. Here the boar lurked, and the wolf hunted. But, for the most, it was dark and calamitous--a ghostly wilderness almost forsaken by man, and given over to the savagery of beasts.

Pelleas and Igraine came upon the occasional trail of the heathen as they went. A smoking villa, a burnt village with a dun mist hanging over it like a shroud, and once a naked man, bruised and bloody, bound to a tree, and shot through with arrows--such were the few sights that remembered to them their own need of caution. The wild country had been raided, and its sparse civilisation scattered to the woods. The crosses at the cross-roads had been thrown down and broken. A hermitage they came on in the woods had been sacked, and in it, to their pity, they found the body of a dead girl. They halted there to pray for her, and to give her burial. Pelleas dug a shallow grave under an oak, and they left her there, and went on their way with greater caution.

Not a soul did they meet, yet Pelleas kept under cover as much as possible for prudence' sake. He scanned well every valley or piece of open land before crossing it, and kept under the wooelshawe whenever the track ran near trees. Fear of the unknown, and the dear burden that he bore, kept him alert as a goshawk for possible peril. By noon, despite sundry halts and reconnoitrings, they had covered nearly twenty miles, and by the evening of the same day they had added another score, for Pelleas's horse was a powerful beast, and Igraine's weight cumbered him little.

Towards evening it began to rain, a heavy, summer, windless shower, that made moist rattle in the leaves, and flooded fragrant freshness into the air. Pelleas gave Igraine his cloak, and made her wear it, despite her excuses. As luck would have it, they came upon a little inn built in the grey shelter of a forsaken quarry. The inn folk were still there---an old woman, and a brat of a boy, her grandson. Seeing so great a knight, the beldam was ready enough to give them lodgings, and what welcome she could muster. She spread a supper of goat's milk, brown bread, and venison--not a bad table for such a hovel. The meal over, she pointed Pelleas with a leer to a little inner room that boasted a rough bed, a water-pot, and ewer.

"We will not disturb ye," she said; "my lad has foddered the horse. You would be stirring early?"

Pelleas gave the woman her orders, and sent Igraine into the inner room. He made himself a bed of dried bracken before her door, and laid himself there so that none could enter save over his body. The woman and the boy slept on straw in a corner. In this wise they passed the night.

On the morrow after more goat's milk and brown bread, with some wild strawberries to smooth it, they sallied early, and held on their way to Winchester. The shower of the night had given place to fair weather, and a fresh breeze blowing from the west. Soon the sun was up in such strength that the green woods lost their dankness, and the leaves their dew. It was the very morning for a ride.

If possible, Pelleas was even more gloomy than on the day before. There was such a level air of dejection over his whole being that Igraine began to have grave qualms of conscience, and to suffer the reproaches of a pity that grew more clamorous hour by hour. None the less, maugre the man's sorry humour, there was a certain stealthy joy in it all, for Pelleas, by his very moodiness, flattered her tenderness for him not a little. She began to see, in very truth, how staunch the man was; how he meant to honour to the letter her imagined vows, though his love grieved like a winged merlion. His great strength became more and more apparent. A lighter spirit would have gone with the wind, or made great moan over the whole business. Pelleas, she saw, was striving to buckle his sorrow deep in his bosom, to save her the pain of knowing his distress. There was nothing little about the man. Palpably he had not succeeded eminently in his attempt to spur a wounded spirit into light courtliness and easy hypocrisy. Still, that was not his fault; it only said the more for his love.

It was not till noon had passed that Pelleas, with a heavy courage, constrained himself to speak calmly of their parting. Even then he was so eager to shape his speech into mere courtesies, that he overdid the thing, more than betraying himself to the girl's quick wit.

He had questioned her as to her friends in Winchester, and her purposes for the future. His rambling took somewhat of a didactic turn as he laboured at his mentorship.

"There is a fair abbey within the walls," he said; "I have heard it nobly spoken of both as to devoutness and comfort. Their rules are not of such iron caste as at some other holy houses; the library is good, and there is a well-planted garden. The abbess is a gracious and kindly woman, and of high family. I have often had speech with her myself, and can vouch for her courtliness and benevolence. Assuredly you may find very safe and peaceful harbour there."

Igraine smiled to herself at the callous benignity of his counsel. He might have been her grandfather by his manner.

"You see," she said naively, "I do not like being caged; it spoils one's temper so. I have an uncle in the place--an uncle by marriage--a man not loved vastly by the proud folk of my own family. He is a goldsmith by trade, and is named Radamanth."

Pelleas's quick answer was not prophetic of great favour.

"Radamanth," he said--" a gentleman who weighs his religion by the pound, and is seen much at church. Pardon my frankness, I had this gold chain of him. He is rich as Rome, and has high rank among the merchants."

"So I had heard," she answered.

Pelleas looked into space with a most judicial air.

"You do not think of going to a secular house," he said.

Igraine smiled to herself, and halted a moment in her answer.

"Why not?" she said.

"You--a nun?"

"Pelleas, I do not see why it is necessary for holiness to be bricked up like a frog in a wall in order to escape corruption. Why, you are eating your own words."

"But you have vows," he said.

"I have; and doubts also."

"Doubts?" quoth the man, with a quick look, thrilling inwardly.

"Doubts, Pelleas, doubts."

She caught his eyes with hers, and gave him one long, deep stare that made him quake as though all that had been flame within him--that which he had sought to tread to ashes--had but spread redly into her bosom. There was no parrying such a message. It smote him blind in a moment. The spiritual bastions of his soul seemed to reel and rock as though some chaos had broken on their stones. There was great outcry in his heart, as of a leaguer when guards and stormers are at grapple on the walls. "Cross! Holy Cross!" cried Conscience, in the moil. "Yield ye, and yield ye, Pelleas," sang a voice more subtle, "yield ye, and let Love in!" He sat stiff in the saddle, and shut his eyes to the day, while the fight boiled on within him. Now Love had him heart and hand; now Honour, blind and bleeding, struggled in and stemmed the rout. He was won and lost, lost and won, a dozen times in a minute.

Recovered somewhat, he made bold to question Igraine yet further.

"Tell me your, doubts, girl," he said.

"They are deep, Pelleas, deep as the sea."

"Whence came they, then?

"Some great power put them in my heart, and they are steadfast as death."

Again the wild flush of liberty swept Pelleas like wind.

"Tell me, Igraine," he said, in a gasp.

She put her fingers gently on his lips. "Patience--patience," she said, "and perhaps I will tell them to you, Pelleas, ere long."

Thus much she suffered him to go, and no further. Her quick instinct had read him nearly to the "Explicit," and there she halted, content for an hour or a day. Her love was singing like a lark in the blue. She beamed on the man in spirit streams of pride and tumultuous tenderness. How she would comfort him in the end! He should carry her into Winchester on his horse, and she would lodge there, but not at the great inn that harboured souls for heaven. She would have the bow and the torch for her signs, and possibly the Church might serve her in other fashion. Like a lotus eater, she dallied with all these dreams in her heart.

With the sun low in the west, Pelleas and Igraine were still three leagues or so from Winchester. The day was passing gloriously, with the radiant acolytes of evening swinging their jasper censers in the sky. The two were riding on a pine-crowned ridge, and the stretch of wilderness beyond seemed wrapped in one mysterious blaze of smoking gold. Hills and woods were glittering shadows, like spirit things in spirit atmosphere. The west was a great curtain of transcendent gold. Pelleas and Igraine could not look at it without great wonder.

Presently they came to a little glade, green and quiet, with a clear pool in it ringed round with rushes. A lush cushion of grass and moss swept from the water to the bases of the trees. It was as quaint and sweet a nook as they had passed that day. The place, with its solitude and stillness, pleased Igraine very greatly.

"What say you, Pelleas," she said, "let us off-saddle, and harbour here the night. This little refuge will serve us more kindly than a ride in the dark to Winchester."

Pelleas, looked round about him, knelt for once without struggle to his own inmost wishes, and agreed with Igraine.

"Very good," he said. I can build you a bower to sleep in. There are hazels yonder--just the stuff for a booth. The water there looks sweet enough to drink, and we have ample in the cloth for a supper."

Igraine gave him no more leisure to moralise on such trifles. She sprang down to the cushiony turf, and took his horse by the bridle.

"I will be master again for once, Pelleas," she said, "since, well of your wound, you have played the tyrant. At least you shall obey me to-night."

Pelleas, half in a stupor, gave up fighting his own heart for awhile, and fell in with Igraine's humour. She was strangely full of smiles and quiet glances; her eyes would meet his, flash, thrill him, and then evade his soul with sudden mischief. She tethered his horse for him, and then, making him sit down under a tree, she began to unarm him, kneeling confidently by his side. Her fingers lingered over-long on the buckles. When she lifted off his helmet, her hands touched his face and forehead, and set him blushing like a boy. The very nearness of her--her breath, her dress, her lips and eyes so near to his--made him like so much wax passive, obedient, yet red as fire.

When she had ended her task, she gave him his naked sword and her orders.

"Now you may cut me hazels for a bower, Pelleas," she said. "I will have it here under this tree where the moss is soft and dry. This summer night one could sleep under the stars and never feel the dew."

Pelleas rose up and did her bidding. The green boughs were ready to his great-sword, as it gleamed and glimmered in the wizard light. He cut two forked stakes, and set them upright in the ground, with a pole between them. Then he built up branches about this centrepiece till the whole was roofed and walled with shelving green; he spread his red cloak therein for a carpet. Igraine sat and watched his labour. Life seemed to have rushed nearly to its zenith, and her thoughts were soaring in regions of gold.

The black moth night had come into the sky with his golden-spotted wings all spread. It was time for idyllic love, pure looks, and the touch of hands. The billowy bosoms of the trees rolled sombrously above and the little pool was like a wizard's glass, black and deep with sheeny mysteries.

Igraine beckoned Pelleas to a seat on the grass bank at her feet when he had finished. There was a light on her face that the man had not seen before, a kind of quiet rapture, a veil of exultation, as though her maidenhood were flowering gold under a net of pinkest satin. She had loosened her hair in straight streams upon her shoulders, and her habit lay open to the very base of her shapely throat. She sat there and looked at him, with hands clasped in her lap, and her grey gown rising and falling markedly as she breathed. It seemed to Pelleas that there was nothing in the whole universe save twilight, two eyes, a stirring bosom, and two wistful lips.

They had been speaking of their ride, and of the many strange things that had befallen them during their adven-tures together. Igraine had waxed strangely tender in her talk, and had spoken subtle bodeful words that meant much at such a season. She was flinging bonds about Pelleas that made him exult and suffer. His heart seemed great within him and ready to break, for the blood that bubbled and yearned in it in glorious anguish.

"To-morrow," said the girl, "we enter Winchester, and I have known you, Pelleas, two weeks and some few hours more. You seem to have been in my life many years."

Words flooded into Pelleas's heart, and stifled all struggle for a moment. He was breathing like a hunted thing.

"Igraine," he said.

"Pelleas."

"I never lived till our lives were joined."

Igraine gave a little gasp, and bent over him suddenly, her eyes aglow, her hair falling down into his face.

"Kiss me, Pelleas," she said; "in the name of God, kiss me."

Pelleas gave a great groan.

"Girl, I dare not."

"You dare."

"Igraine?"

She bent herself till her lips were over his, and both their heads were clouded in her hair. Her eyes glimmered, her breath beat on his, he saw the whiteness of her teeth between her half-closed lips.

"Igraine," he said again, half in a groan.

She did not answer him, but simply took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes.

"Coward, Pelleas."

Power seemed to go from the man in a moment. He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked at her as in a splendid dream. Her face was beautifully peevish, and there lurked an infinite hunger on her lips. Then with a great woe in his heart he drew her face down to his and kissed her. There was such sweet pain in the grand despair of it all that he felt faint for strength of loving. Before he had gathered breath, Igraine had slipped away from him and was in the bower.

"Till dawn, Pelleas, till dawn," she said.

"Ah, Igraine!"

"Go and sleep, Pelleas; I will talk to you on the morrow."