Uther and Igraine/Book 2/3

III

IT was not long before Gildas, the court physician, a dear old scoundrel with a white beard and a portentous face, came down in state to attend on Igraine. He was an old gentleman of most solemn soul. His dignity was so tremendous a thing, that you might have imagined him a solitary Atlas holding the whole world's health upon his shoulders.

He soon dabbled his fingers in Igraine's wounds that morning, dropped in oil, and balmed them with myrrh and unguents under a dressing of clean cloth. He frowned all the time, as was his custom in the sick chamber, as though wisdom lay heavy on his soul, or at least as though he wished folk to think so. The only time you saw Gildas smile was when you payed him a fee or complimented him upon his knowledge. Tickle his pocket or his vanity, and he beamed on you. That morning he told Radamanth that his niece's wounds were serious, but that he trusted that they would heal innocently, treated as they had been by credited skill. Gildas always pulled a long face over a patient's possibilities; such discretion kept him from pitfalls, and enabled him to claim all the credit when matters turned out happily.

The streaks of scarlet in the white waste of skin soon died cleanly into mere bands of pink, and Igraine had little trouble from her wounds, thanks to the great Gildas. In fact, she was in bed but three days, while Lilith played nurse, chatted and sang to her, or leant at the open window to tell her of those who passed in the street. Master Gildas came and went morning and evening with the prodigious regularity of the sun. The girls aped him behind his back, and Igraine, with some ingratitude to science, made Lilith empty the ruby-coloured physic out of the window. It happened to spatter a lean booby of a man as he passed, who, looking up, flattered himself that Lilith must have sprinkled him with scented water by way of showing her affection. So much for Gildas's rose-water and flowers of dill.

The man of physic marched each day like a god into Gorlois's house to tell how the Lady Igraine fared at his hands. Such patronage was worth much to Gildas, and knowing how the wind blew, he puffed religiously upon the new-kindled fire. The girl's glamour had caught up Gorlois in a golden net. He had loved to look upon her and to dream, but now the perfume of her hair, the warm softness of her body, the very odour of her shed and scarlet blood were memories in him that would not fade. One evening a posy of flowers came tumbling in at Igraine's window.

Lilith looked out, and saw Gorlois.

"For the Lady Igraine," were his words.

Lilith smiled down, and ventured to tell him that Igraine was much beholden to his courtesy and succour, and would thank him with her own lips when well of her wounds. She took the flowers to Igraine, who was listening in bed in the twilight.

"Shall I throw a flower back?" asked the girl.

"It would be courteous."

Lilith did so. The bloom struck Gorlois on the mouth like a blown kiss. The man put the thing in his bosom with a great smile, and went home to spend some hours like a star-gazer in his garden, while his musicians tuned their strings behind the bushes. At such a season Gorlois loved sound and colour. The voices, sweetly melancholic, thrilled up into the night--

"Her head is of brighter gold than the broom-flower,

Her breast like foam under her green tunic;

Like a summer sky at night are her glances;

Her fingers are as wood anemones in a daze of dew;

Of her lips,--who shall tell!

The gates of a sunset

Where love dies.

Her limbs are like May-blossoms

Bedded on a green couch:

The night sighs for her,

And for the touch of her hand."

Of course Morgan had escaped capture. Gorlois's men had hunted an hour or more, and had caught nothing, not even a glimpse of the purple gown for which they searched. Radamanth, who had had the affair from Gorlois's own lips, came and told Igraine, and began to ask her who this woman foe of hers was. Igraine put him off with a fable. She had no thought of letting him have knowledge of her love for Pelleas, and she was glad in measure that Morgan had escaped capture, and so left her secret in oblivion. The woman might have proved troublesome if brought to bay, for she had as much right to claim the truth as had Igraine. Better let a snake go than take it by the tail.

In a week or so there was nothing left to mark the incident save the red lines in Igraine's white skin. Flowers and fruit came daily in from Gorlois, and every evening there was music under the window, till she began to consider these perpetual courtesies. She was woman enough to know whither they all tended. As for Radamanth, he was more kind to her than ever, seeing how the wind might blow favours into his ready lap. Gorlois was a great and noble gentleman and the goldsmith had an intense respect for the nobility.

The very first day that Igraine walked abroad again after her seclusion, she fell in straight with Gorlois. By Gildas's advice, she had gone, presumably for her health's sake, to the baths with Lilith; and Gorlois, warned by the leech himself, followed alone, and overtook them near the porch. He was very gracious, very sympathetic, very splendid. He begged a meeting with Igraine after she had bathed, and since the girl had something in her heart that made her wish to speak with him, she consented, and left him in the laconicum, proposing to meet him in the rosewalk an hour later. Truth to tell, she intended questioning him as to Pelleas, whether Gorlois had heard of a knight so named; and also as to Uther, whether he had yet been heard of in any region of Britain. She knew Gorlois would take her consent as favour. Still, she imagined she could venture a little for her heart's sake without much prick of conscience.

An hour later, true to her word, she went alone into the rose-walk, a grassy pathway banked with yews, and hemmed with a rich tangle of red blooms. Gorlois was there waiting as for a tryst. He was full of smiles and staunch glances as he led her to a seat that was set back in an alcove, carved from the dense green of the yews, where they might talk at leisure, and out of sight. Igraine's hair lay loosened over her shoulders to dry in the sun. It had been perfumed and the scent of it swept over Gorlois like a violet mist. He sat watching her for a while in silence, as she plied her comb with the sun-shaken masses pouring over her face like ruddy smoke.

"Lady Igraine," he said at length.

The girl's eyes glimmered at him slantwise from behind her hair.

"I knew your father, Malgo, before his death."

Igraine merely nodded.

"I am claiming to be the friend of his daughter, seeing that I have learnt the very colour of her several girdles, the number and pattern of her gowns since I rode into Winchester."

The venture in flattery was perhaps more suggestive than Igraine could have wished.

"You must waste much time, my lord."

"But little."

"I am sorry I have so poor a wardrobe, that you have fathomed the whole of it in less than a month. To tell the truth, when I came into Winchester, I had only one gown, and that rather ragged."

"They did not give you green and gold at Avangel?"

"No, the good women wore grey to typify the colour of their souls."

Gorlois laughed in his keen quiet fashion. The girl's eyes were wonderfully bright and subtle, and he had never seen such a splendour of hair. He longed to finger it, to let it run through his fingers like amber wine. Leaning one elbow on the stone back of the seat, and his head on his palm, he watched the silver comb rippling at its work, with a kind of dreamy complacency.

The girl's voice broke out suddenly upon him.

"My lord?"

Gorlois attended.

"You know many of the knights and gentlemen famed for arms in Britain?"

"I may so boast myself."

"I was once befriended, a piece of passing courtesy, yet I have always been curious to learn the character and estate of the man who did me this service. Have you heard of a knight named Pelleas?"

Gorlois fingered his sharp-peaked black beard, and looked blankly irresponsive

"I have never known such a knight," he said.

"Strange."

"Never so. We men of the woods and moors often ride under false colours, sometimes to try our friends on the sly, sometimes to escape cognisance. The man who befriended you may have been Pelleas in your company."

Igraine cut in with a laugh.

"And Ambrosius at home," she said; "even Princes love masquerading in strange arms. Meadow-flower that I am, I have never seen the stately folk of the court--Ambrosius or Uther. I have heard Uther is an ugly man."

"If strength makes a man ugly, Uther may claim ugliness."

"Well?"

"Picture a dark man with black hair, eyes packed away under heavy brows, a straight mouth, and a great clean-shaven jaw that looks sullen as death."

"Not beautiful in words."

Gorlois stretched his shoulders, and half yawned behind his hand.

"Uther is a man with a conscience like a north wind," he said; "always lashing him into tremendous effort for the sake of duty. He has the head and neck of a lion, the grip of a bear. You have never known Uther till you have seen him in battle. Then he is like a mountain thundering down against a sea, a black flood plunging through a pine forest. A quaint, gentle, devilish, God-ridden madman; I can paint him no other way."

Igraine laughed softly to herself.

"A man worth seeing," she said.

"I should judge so."

"Tell me, is it true that Uther has gone into the wilds, and been seen of no man many days? "

"Uther left Winchester more than two months ago, and no word of him has come to Ambrosius."

"Curious."

"Madame, nothing is curious in Uther. If I were to hear some day that he had ridden down to Hades to fight a pitched battle with Satan, I should say, 'Poor Satan, I warrant he has a sore head.'"

"Indeed!" quoth Igraine

She shook her hair, tilted her chin, and looked at Gorlois out of the corners of her eyes. She guessed her power, was young, and a woman. It tempted her to read this creature called "man" in his various forms and phases, and hold his heart in the hollow of her hand. Her interest in Gorlois was no discourtesy to her love for Pelleas. She had seen few men in her time; they seemed strange beings, strong yet weak, wise yet very foolish, sometimes heroic, yet utter children.

Gorlois, who had the sun in his eyes, beheld her as in an unusual mist. He was warming to life, for his brain seemed full of the sound of harping and his blood blithe with summer. Stretching out a hand he touched Igraine's hair as it poured over her shoulders, for the red gold threads seemed magnetic to his fingers, and the glimmer of her eyes made his tough flesh creep.

"You have wonderful hair," he said.

"I learnt that long ago," drawing the strand away.

"The dawn of knowledge."

"It reaches not so very far from my feet."

Igraine hung out a flag, as it were, to try the man. She knew the look of Pelleas's eyes, and she wanted Gorlois for comparison. Standing up, she shook the glistening shroud about her while it seemed to drop perfumes and to spark out passion. The man's malady showed plainly enough on his face, but his eyes did not please Igraine. There was too much selfishness, not enough abasement. She knew Pelleas would have looked at her as though she was a saint in a church, and he but a lad from the brown ploughland. Igraine thought that she loved mute devotion far better than the bold impatient hunger on Gorlois's face.

The man leant back and tilted his beard at her, while his eyes were half shut for the sun.

"I have heard it told that women are ambitious. Is it truth? "

Igraine, all gravity again, with her tentative mischief banished, looked at her knees, and said she could not tell. Gorlois waxed subtle.

"Are you ambitious, Igraine?"

"Ambitious, my lord?"

"Have you never wished to stand out like a bright peak above the world?"

"No."

"Or to have the glory of your beauty filling the gate of fame like a scarlet sky?"

Igraine forced a titter.

"I suppose you are a poet, sir."

"Only a fool, madame."

"Ah!"

"All poets are fools."

"How do you contrive that?

"Because they are for ever praising women."

"And yet you are a poet, my lord!"

"How could I be else, madame, since I am a man?"

Gorlois took a deep breath, and smiled at the dark yews, sombre and mysterious behind their belt of glowing roses. Igraine was watching his face in some uneasiness. It gave the profile of a strong, stark man, whose every feature spelt alert daring and great hardihood of mind. There was a keen, half-cruel look about the tight lips and impatient eyes. She was contrasting him with Pelleas in her heart, and the dark, brooding face of lion-like mould that so haunted her left little glory for Gorlois's lighter, leaner countenance.

They were both strong men, but she guessed instinctively which was the stronger.

Gorlois turned suavely again, with his courage strung like a steel bow.

"I am a queer fellow," he said.

Igraine began to bind her hair.

"If I ever loved a woman--"

"Well, my lord?"

"She could be ambitious to her heart's content. The more her pride flamed, the better I should like her."

Igraine frowned.

"She would be intolerable."

Gorlois arched his eyebrows, and covered his convictions with a laugh.

"Shall I tell how I should win her?"

"It would be a quaint tale."

"In the beginning, I should half-kill any man who braved it out that she was not the comeliest woman in Britain."

"Somewhat harsh, my lord, but emphatic."

"I should make her the envy of every lady, dame, and damoselle in the land."

"Not wise."

"Like a golden Helen should she rise in the east; blood should flow about her feet like water; I would tear down kingdoms to pile her up a throne. Such should be my wooing."

Igraine looked at her lap, and said never a word for minute or more. All these heroics were rather hollow to her ear, though she did not doubt the man's sincerity towards himself, and his earnest mind to please her. Then she asked Gorlois a very simple question,

"Imagine, my lord, that the woman loved some other man."

Gorlois's answer came swift off his tongue.

"I should meet him in open field, sword to sword, and shield to shield, and kill him."

Igraine started suddenly, grave and grey as any beadswoman. She did not think Pelleas would have taught any such doctrine.

"To you, that is love?" she asked.

"What else!"

Igraine thrust her silver bodkin into her hair with some vigour; there was no mirth or patience in her.

"I name it murder."

"Madame!"

"Stark, selfish murder."

Gorlois spread his hands and laughed.

"What is love?" he asked.

"Should I know!"

"Stark selfishness,--nothing more."

Igraine thought of Pelleas, and the way he had left her for knowledge of her imagined vows. Something in her heart told her that that was love indeed that had clasped thorns in the struggle to embrace truth. Therewith she wished Gorlois a very formal good-morning, refused his escort, and went straight home with the clear conviction that she had learnt something to her credit. Her talk with Gorlois had set a brighter halo about Pelleas's head.

Gorlois of Cornwall was nothing if not subtle. A selfish man of diplomatic mind may reach the very zenith of unselfishness to work his ends. Gorlois had so studied the expediencies and discretions of his purpose that even his love, headstrong though it may have been, was for the time being harnessed to the chariot of circumspection, whence intellect drove with steady hand. He had discovered for himself that Igraine was of sterner, prouder stuff than the general mob of women, and that he could not count much upon her vanity. She was to be won by honour, stark, unflinching honour, and by such alone, and Gorlois, thanks to the no mean wit that was in him, had judged that to his credit. He set about winning her at first with a consistency that was admirable, and a wisdom that would have honoured Nestor.

Naturally enough, Radamanth was amazed. Gorlois, one of the first men in Britain, sitting in a goldsmith's parlour and soliciting his patronage and countenance with a modest manliness! Radamanth stroked his beard, strove to appear at ease under so intense an obligation, struggled to wed servility with a new-found sense of importance. The whole business was most astonishing; not that Gorlois should love the daughter of Malgo of the Redlands, but that he should come frankly to a Winchester merchant and make such a Minos of him. Radamanth beamed, stuttered, excused himself, crept, condescended, in one breath. When Gorlois had gone, the good man sat down to think in a sweat of wonder. Probably he would find himself feasting with the king before long, and certainly it might prove excellent for trade.

After a cup of wine and a biscuit to restore his faculties, he sent for Igraine, who was in the garden, and prepared to parade his news with a most benevolent pleasure. He took a most solemn and serious mood, bowed her to a chair in magnificent fashion, and began in style.

"My dear niece, I have great honour to lay before you."

Igraine, who had heard nothing of Gorlois's visit, merely waited for Radamanth to unfold, with a mild and silent curiosity. The old man was big and benignant with the news he had, and when he began to speak he rolled his words with the sonorous satisfaction of a poet reading his verses to patrons in some Roman peristyle.

"Lady Igraine," he said, "honour is pleasant to an old man, and reverence welcome as savoury pottage. Yet, honour to those he loves is even sweeter to him than honour to himself. In honouring a kinswoman of mine, a certain noble gentleman has poured oil of delicious flattery on my grey head, and treated me to such an exhibition of grace, frankness, and courtesy, that my heart still warms to him. Perhaps, my dear niece, you can guess to whom I refer."

Igraine thrilled to a sudden thought--a thought of Pelleas. "I cannot tell," she said.

Radamanth could have winked, only in his present exalted frame of mind he remembered that such an expression was neither dignified nor courtly. If he were to become the associate of noble folk, it behoved him to raise up new ideals, and so he contented himself with a most ingenuous smile.

"Hear, then," he said, "that my noble visitor was the Count Gorlois."

"Gorlois!"

"Exactly."

Radamanth believed Igraine wholly overwhelmed. He waxed more and more patriarchal, till his very beard seemed to grow in dignity.

"Believe me, a most honourable man. Gentlemen of his position might well fancy other methods--well, never mind that. Count Gorlois came to me, like a man, to frankly crave my sanction for a betrothal."

Igraine stared, admired Gorlois's excellent plan for netting Faith, Hope, and Charity at one swoop, but said nothing. Radamanth prosed on.

"Count Gorlois besought me in most courtly and flattering fashion to countenance him in his claims. He would have everything done in the light, he said, in honourable, manly, and open fashion--no secret loitering after dark, or sly kisses under hedges. Mark the gentleman, dear niece."

The goldsmith idled over the words as though they were fat morsels of flattery, and Igraine had never seen him look so eminently happy before. She understood quite well that Gorlois's move had inspired him into complete and glowing partisanship, and that she was to have those sage words of advice that young folk love so much. Radamanth climbed down, meanwhile, to material things, and began to knock off Gorlois's possessions in practical fashion on his fingers.

"A grand match," he said. "There are the castles in Cornwall--Terabil and Tintagel; the lands in Gore and elsewhere; the palace in London; and the great house here by the river. In Logria he has lands, I have heard,--miles of fat pastures, woods, and many manors, lying towards the great oaks of Brederwode. The man is as rich as any in Britain, and if death took Ambrosius or Uther--"

Igraine cut in upon his verbosity.

"What did you tell him, uncle?"

Radamanth stared at her, with his fingers still figuring.

"Tell him, child?"

"Yes."

"What a thing to ask. Of course I promised to further his cause with you in every way possible. I said we should soon need the priest."

Igraine groaned in spirit.

"It is all useless," she said.

"What! "

"I have no scrap of love for this man."

Now Radamanth had never heard a word of Pelleas, for Igraine had cautioned Lilith never to speak to her father on the matter. Like many old people who have spent their lives in getting and possessing, he had lost that subtle something that men call "soul." Sentiment to him was a foolish and troublesome thing when it interfered with material advantage or profit, or barred out Mammon, with its rod twined with red roses. Consequently he was taken aback by Igraine's cool reception of so momentous a blessing. He sat bolt upright in his chair and stared at her.

"My dear niece."

There was such chagrin in his voice that Igraine, remembering his many kindnesses, hung her head and felt unhappy.

"Do not be angry," she said; " I do not wish you to speak of this more."

"But, my dear child, the honour, the fame, the noise of it!"

Igraine almost smiled at his palpable dismay, for she knew that her words must have flustered him not a little. Radamanth mopped his bald head, for the season was sultry.

"I am astounded," he said.

"Uncle!"

"Let me reason with you."

"Love is not reason."

"No, niece, it is prejudice. Yet I assure you Gorlois is a most noble soul."

"If he were a seraph, uncle, I could not love him."

"You women are all fancy. Why, you have hardly seen the colour of him. Come, now!"

"I do not need to see more of Gorlois."

"Why, bless my soul, my wife never loved me till we had been married a month, and she had learnt my fibre."

Igraine thought a moment. Then she asked Radamanth a question.

"Do you love Lilith?"

"Why, girl, what a question."

"Would you marry her to a man she did not love or trust, simply because it brought gold?"

Radamanth saw himself rounded in the argument like a rat in a corner. He sat stroking his beard, and striving to look pleased.

"Think over it, my dear," he said presently.

"There is no need."

"Gorlois will woo you like a hero."

"Let him. He will accomplish nothing."

"It would be a grand match."

Igraine jumped up, kissed him to show she bore no ill will, and ran away much troubled to find Lilith in the garden. She flung herself down beside the girl in the bower of laurels, and told her all that passed that morning in Radamanth's parlour. Lilith listened with her brown eyes deep with thought, and a quiet wonder. When Igraine bad finished, Lilith took both her hands in hers, and, kneeling before her, looked up into her face.

"What will you do, Igraine?"

"Need you ask, dear?"

"Forgive me."

"Ah!"

"You love Pelleas."

Igraine put her arms round Lilith's neck, and kissed her.