Chapter IV: Book I: The Way to Winchester (4)

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, 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 a 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 in the pool 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 a while, 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 adventures 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."

X

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.