Uther and Igraine/Book 2/8

VIII

NOTHING is more chafing to the patience than to lie abed crippled, knowing the while that coveted hours are slipping through one's fingers like grains of gold. To Igraine, her maimed ankle was a very thorn in the flesh. Her thoughts were tugging to be at Sarum, and she was in continual fear lest Radamanth or Gorlois should track her to her temporary refuge, and attempt to mar her freedom. She was not a woman who could take hindrance with perfect philosophy, comforting herself with the reflection that care never yet salved unrest. She chafed at delay, and even blamed Eudol with great unreason because he had obliged her with a horse not proof against stumbling.

The knowledge that Gorlois rode in search of her did not tend to the easing of her mind. She began to understand Gorlois to the full. He had betrayed so much of himself in Radamanth's garden that her dread grew nearly as great as her disrelish.

Eudol had made her comfortable enough in his manor, she had no need to find fault with his hospitality. She had her own room, a little girl to wait and sing to her, fruit and food of the best. She spent the greater part of each day in the garden, her bed being set under the vine leaves ; two of Eudol's slaves would carry her down in the morning and bear her back again at night, so that she should not be too venturesome in trying her ankle. The old merchant kept his folk close on the farm and suffered none to go to Winchester or Salisbury, for fear lest the knowledge of Igraine's whereabouts should leak into interested channels.

The more the girl saw of Eudol the less she relished him in her heart. The lean look of him, his little green eyes, his thin goat-like beard, reminded her much of the picture of some old Satyr she had seen in the frescoes on the walls of the triclinium at Winchester. He grew more fatherly and kind to her, would smile like some old saint as he sat and read moralities to her from the lives of some of the Fathers. He was very fond of holding her hand and stroking it while he purred sentiment, and made her colour to bear his nonsense. He was quite wickedly delighted when he had fetched a blush to her face. He would sit and chuckle and hug himself, while his little eyes glistened and his beard shook. Igraine, though her cheeks often tingled, did her best to suffer him, knowing well enough that she was greatly dependent for her peace of mind upon his good-will. She would laugh, turn his senile flatteries into jest, and assume his humour as the most vapoury and fanciful piece of fun possible. She often hinted that Eudol must be neglecting his farm for her sake, though her suggestions were absolutely to no purpose, seeing that Eudol had forgotten all about such mundane matters as harvesting or the pressing of cider.

One afternoon they had a shrewd fright, and the incident led in its final development to Igraine's leaving the manor in the meadows. She was in the garden with Eudol when two horsemen wearing Gorlois's livery rode up to the gate and demanded entertainment with much froth and bombast. They were sturdy hot-tongued rogues, quick at liquor, quicker still at blasphemy. Eudol, much flustered, had them brought into the house and set loose upon a wine flask while he smuggled Igraine out of the garden. There was a barn standing on the other side of a little meadow near the house, and the building was screened by a fringe of pines and a thorn hedge. Eudol hurried Igraine to the barn, saw her couched on a pile of hay, closed the door on her, and scampered back to take great care of Gorlois's gentlemen.

Eudol proved a most obsequious and attentive host. He kept the men primed with wine, watched them like a lynx, forbade his slaves and servants the room so that there should be no chance of gossip. The fellows thought themselves well harboured. Eudol, hardy old tipster, kept them going with a will, till they swore he was the best old gentleman at his cups they had met this side of the Thames. He out-drank, out-yarned, out-jested the pair of them. Grown very mellow towards evening, they vowed by all the calendar that they loved him so much they would make a night of it, and not go to bed till they were carried. Eudol could have denied himself their great esteem, but there was nothing for it but to humour them.

He got rid of the fellows next morning, when they went away sadly, very glazed about the eyes, swearing they would pay him another visit at their very earliest opportunity. Eudol, when they were out of sight, went out to the barn and found Igraine comfortably couched there on a mass of hay. The little maid who served her had brought her supper on the sly the night before, and she had fared well enough in her new quarters.

As a matter of fact Eudol had had a parting cup with the men that morning, and had hardly outbreathed as yet the maudlin heritage gotten the previous night. He kissed Igraine's hand, mumbled his usual courtesies, excused his long absence with a warmth that nearly brought him to tears. He was somewhat flushed over the cheek bones; his eyes were bright, and his breath pregnant with the heavy scent of wine. Igraine wiped the hand he had kissed on her gown, looked at him with little love or gratitude, and told him that she had been trying to walk, and that her ankle bore her passably.

Eudol, edging near, proceeded to narrate at preposterous length how he had kept Gorlois's men employed, made them drunk as cobblers, and packed them off innocently to Winchester that morning. He was hugely sly over it all. He came and climbed up beside Igraine on the hay, and pinched her arm with his lean fingers as he talked. There was a gaunt, red, eager look about his face. It was quite twilight in the great barn, and a mingled smell of hay and pitch-pine filled the air, while dusty beams of light filtered through in steady streams.

Eudol's vinous and fatherly solicitude developed abruptly into an absurd revelation of his inner self. He had hold of Igraine's arm with one hand. Leaving go suddenly, he reached for her waist, poked his grey beard into her face, and made a clumsy dab at her cheek. In a moment the girl's arm had swept him backwards like an impotent bag of bones. She saw him overbalance and roll off the haycock on to the edge of a scythe. Without waiting for more, and with a glimpse of the old fool's slippers still in the air, she slipped down from the hay and out of the barn, and shutting the door, pegged the catch with a piece of wood. Then she went laughing half resentfully towards the house, and told Dame Phoebe that her master had gone to the fields to oversee his slaves.

The woman had taken a remarkable dislike to Igraine, being sulky-eyed and dumb-saucy in her presence as far as she dared. The grey nun told her that she was ending her sojourn at the farm that morning, and was going on foot for the west. The woman's face changed as suddenly as a spring sky. She was suave and smiling instanter, ready with queries as to Igraine's ankle, very eager to pack her wallet with stuff from Eudol's larder. Igraine, with an inward flush, saw how the wind blew. She was keen to be gone before Eudol should be loosed from the barn; even the woman's changed mood seemed a tacit insult in itself.

She was soon treading the meadows where the backs of Eudol's sheep stood out like white boulders on the solitary stretch of green. The country began to be as flat as a table, though there were still masses of woodland piled on either side the great white road. Igraine kept in among the trees with just a glimpse of the highway to keep her to her mark. Her grey gown passed almost unperceptibly among the mould-grown trunks as she went in the chequered light like a grey mouse through green corn. Her ankle bore her better than she had prophesied, and she made fair travelling at a modest pace. Later in the afternoon the strain began to tell in measure, and her ankle ached and felt hot, as though she had done enough. Sitting down on a fallen tree she watched the road, and waited for some one to pass.

A charcoal burner went by with a couple of asses panniered up with a comfortable load. Then came two soldiers and a couple of light wenches who haunted camp and castle and lived to the minute. Next, a great wain half ladened up with faggots came lumbering along, drawn by a pair of sleepy horses; and driven by a peasant in a green smock and leather breeches. Igraine took her choice, and going down from the trees, stood by the roadside and begged of the man a lift.

Seeing a nun looking up at him the man reined in, climbed down cap in hand, and louted low to her. There was some clean straw spread over the boards at the bottom of the cart. The man helped her up on to the tail-board and raked the straw into a heap to make her a seat. Then they lumbered on again towards Sarum.

In due course she began to talk to the man as he sat on a couple of faggots and held the ropes. He was an honest, ignorant fellow, with a much whiskered face that wore a perpetual look of kindly stupidity. Igraine sought to know whether he was going as far as Sarum. The man shook his bushy head like an amiable ogre, and told her that he was for his lord's manor some two leagues distant, where he served as woodman and ranger, or soldier when there was need of steel. He commended his lord's house to her for lodging, with a solid faith in the generosity of its board. Questioned as to other habitations, he told her of a hermit's cell set in a little dale in the woods, a cell where wandering folk often found harbour for the night. Igraine made up her mind to choose the ascetic's bread and water, having had enough of the world's welcome. Possibly in some dim and distant way she began to realise the intense and engrained selfishness of the human heart.

The man of faggots, believing her a holy woman, soon began to relate his domestic troubles to her with a most touching reverence. He told her how his wife had been abed two months from her last childbirth, and how sad and dirty his little cabin was for lack of her hands. He asked Igraine to put the woman in her bede-role, a simple favour that she granted readily enough. Then the fellow with some stolid pathos went on to describe how his eldest lad, a boy of eight, had caught a fever through sleeping in the woods after rain, and how he had fallen sick.

"I went to a good monk," said the man, "and bought holy water and a pinch of dust from a saint's coffin. Pardy! but it cost me a year's savings. The good father bade me pour the water on the boy's head and shake the dust over his body. Glad I was, holy sister; I ran five miles home to cure the lad."

"And he is well?"

The man gave a doleful whistle.

"The boy died," said he with pathetic candour, and a short catch in his voice. "I didn't sleep two whole nights. Then I kissed my woman, mopped her eyes, and went and told the priest."

Igraine merely nodded.

"Ah, the dear father, he told me 'twas God's will, and that the blessed dust had drifted the lad straight to heaven, where he would be singing next King David like any lord. So he came and buried the boy, and there was an end on't."

Igraine for the moment felt heavy about the eyes.

"I should like to see him there in his little white stole," she said. "Do you know, goodman, why so many children die?"

"Faith, madame, I have no learning," said the fellow with a dumb stare.

"Because the great God loves to have children laughing for love of him in heaven."

"Is't so? "

"That is why he took your boy."

The man's face brightened with a new dignity.

"Little Rual was ever a gentle child," he said. "I must tell my woman; it will just make her happy."

"I will pray for her health."

"God bless you, holy lady, you have a wise, kind heart."

Igraine blushed, but said nothing.

Presently the man stopped his horses, and pointed her to a little path that led, he said, to the hermitage. He helped Igraine out of the cart, and knelt on the road for her to give him a blessing. Igraine had a Latin phrase or two from Avangel, and the benediction was earnest enough in spirit, though it lacked genuine authority. Then she took the path through trees, and left the man standing cap in hand by his waggon. Her brief ride with him had done her heart good.

A mile's walk through unkempt pastures and straggling thickets brought her to an open dale set beneath the shoulder of a wooded hill. On the grass slope over against her she saw the hermitage--a grey cell of unfaced stone standing in a garden in a grove of ancient thorns. By the rivulet that ran half hid by undergrowth a figure in a brown cassock was drawing water. Passing down over the water, Igraine overtook the recluse halfway up the slope to the hermitage garden. She remarked his bald head fringed with a mournful halo of hair, his stooping shoulders, his ungainly weak-kneed gait. Hearing her tread behind him he turned a tanned face to her, a face that brought forth a smile of brotherly greeting at sight of a nun. Igraine, by way of creating good feeling, took his water pot and carried it for him, pleading youth in extenuation of the service.

There was a keen yet kindly sapience about the old man's big-nosed face that caught her fancy. He was a bit of a cynic on the surface, but warm as good earth at heart. Igraine confessed her need of a lodging for the night, and the man retorted bluntly with the remark that the hermitage was not his house,--but only a refuge to bury strangers in. Pointing to a great slab of stone that stood near the little cell, he told her that the stone had been his bed, summer and winter, these fifteen years, and that dew, rain, frost, and snow had worked their will upon his body and found it leather. The confession, pithily--almost humorously--put, without a trace of rodomontade, set the girl smiling. She looked at the man's brown buckram skin and congratulated him, embodying her flattery in a little jest that seemed to catch the ascetic fancy. He commended it with a patriarchal twinkle, and throwing open the door of his cell surrendered her its shelter.

Igraine soon fathomed the shallow compass of the hermitage. It held two pallet beds, some rude furniture and crockery, and such things as were necessary to the old man's craft, namely a scourge, a calthrop set on the end of an iron chain, a coat made of furze, a garland of thorn twigs, and a pair of spiked sandals. Gardening tools were piled in a corner. Over the doorway hung a rusty suit of harness and a red crusted sword. Here in this narrow place the war tools of world and church were mingled.

Igraine turned back into the hermitage garden. It was a quiet spot, webbed with the faery tracery of flowers and flowering shrubs, golden with helichryse, full of the mist of unshorn grass, bright with the water of its little fish-pool, where the ferns grew thick. A low wattle fence, climbed about by late-seasoned roses of red, shut the whole within its rustic pale. Some of the herb beds were cut into symbols of holy things, and a bay tree had been laboriously pruned into the rude image of a cross. A number of doves peopled the place, flocking about the hermit as be worked, often lighting on his hands or shoulders, while an old hound dozed in the sun, or followed at his heels. Peace seemed over the little refuge like a tranquil sky.

The hermit handed Igraine a hoe, as a matter of custom, and set her to work on the weeds in a neglected corner, while he busied his hands with pruning some of his rose trees, and removing the clay and linen from his grafts. He was by no means the solemn, dismal soul or the kindly simpleton Igraine might have expected. He had a keen, world-wise air about him that made him seem a sort of Christian Diogenes, and it was plain that he had lived much among men. The mingled austerity and happiness of his habits, when set beside his inwardly sympathetic yet somewhat cynic humour, gave a strong interest to his personality that quite commanded Igraine's liking. Despite the vast responsibilities of man, as he himself put it, he was not above having a jest at life in general. "For," said he, as he pruned his rose bushes, " he who knows and obeys the truth can of all men afford to be merry."

Igraine, smiling through the boughs, agreed with him from her heart.

"There are no sour faces in heaven," she said.

"Assuredly not," said the hermit almost fiercely.

"Then why such mortifications of the flesh, father?"

Looking up from his pruning, he beamed over the world.

"I am a very human rogue."

"Human!

"Well, you see, sister, mea culpa, I loved the world when I was in it like my own life, and even now if I did not gnash upon myself I should grow frivolous at times. When I have spent a night in the rain, or plied my scourge, it is marvellous how swiftly vain the fabrics of a vaunting pride become. 'I am dust, I am dust,' I cry, and am sound at heart again. I look upon bread and olives and a draught of river water as true godsends. Having endured exceeding discomfort of the flesh, I am as happy in the sun here among my flowers as a mortal could be."

Igraine rested on her hoe, and put her head back, while the evening light gave her hair a rare metallic lustre.

"You believe in a life of contrasts, father? "

The old man became suddenly more serious.

"To tell you the truth," he said, "I have found that by making myself fanatically uncomfortable so many hours a day, I can attain for the rest of it that simple, contented, and heaven-soaring mood that belongs to the honest Christian. Man's great peril is apathy, and my customs save me from sleepy ease. There is such a thing as living to pander to the flesh; it is the creed of the majority. In order to enjoy a truly spiritual end, I annihilate the appetites of the body, and ecce homo,--merry, conscience whole, clean."

Igraine resumed her harrowing of reprobate green-stuff.

"I suppose your doctrine is right for yourself," she said.

An answer came back to her leisurely over the rose bush.

"To the backbone, sister. Yet I am not one who would thrust my habits down other men's throats simply because the said habits happen to suit my soul. All religious methods are a matter of individual experiment. One man may feel more Christian if he drinks wine instead of water; if so--by all the prophets--let him have his wine. I hold doctrinal tyranny to be the greatest curse in Christendom."

Igraine agreed with him like a sister.

Soon the sun went down with a flood of gold over the trees, the little pool put off sheeny samite for black velvet, and the doves flew up to roost. The hermit in a genial mood went to his vesper meditations. Igraine saw him kneel down before the great stone with his scourge and crucifix beside him. She was still carnal enough to prefer the thin comfort of a pallet bed in the hermitage to stone or mother earth. When it had grown dark and very still she heard the swish of the steel scourge, and the man's mutterings mingled with the occasional baying of his dog. This phase of mind was, at her age, quite incomprehensible to her. She remembered to pray that night for the peasant's wife who had been sick in bed so long, and for the little lad who lay under the green grass. Then she went to sleep thinking of Pelleas.