Uther and Igraine

BOOK I THE WAY TO WINCHESTER I BENEATH the dark cornices of a thicket of wind-stunted pines stood a small company of women looking out into the hastening night. The half light of evening lay over the scene, rolling wood and valley into a misty mass, while the horizon stood curbed by a belt of immine

II DAY came with an essential stealth. The great trees stood without a rustling leaf, in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held as though the wold knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged from the hymning east, and, the night was not.

III IT was well towards evening when the men disappeared into the wood, leaving the girl bound naked to the tree. The day was calm and tranquil, with the mood of June on the wind, and a benign sky above. Igraine's hair had fallen from its band, and now hung in bronze masses well-nigh to her knees, c

IV WHEN they were clear of the solemn beeches, and saw the road white as white before them, Igraine began to tell the man of the doom of Avangel, and the great end made by Gratia the abbess. The knight had folded his red cloak and spread it for her comfort. Her tale seemed very welcome to him despit

V As they watched, looking down betwixt two thorn trees, a faint puff of dust rose on the road far to the east, and hung like a diminutive cloud over the meadows. This danger signal counselled the pair. Pelleas caught his horse and sprang to selle; Igraine clambered by his stirrup, and was lifted to

VI WITH the heathen lost in the distant woods, Pelleas and the women essayed the house, leaving the two servants to sentinel the island. The great gates of the porch were ajar. Pushing in, they crossed into the atrium, and found it sleepy as solitude. The water in the impluvium gleamed with the gold

VII IGRAINE'S thoughts were to music when she went to bed that night. Pelleas's eyes stayed with her, darkly, sadly; his tragic face seemed to look out of the night, like the face of one dead. And he more than liked her. She felt sure of that, even if she did not dream of kinder things sprung from l

VIII PELLEAS lay the afternoon through in a half dream of shifting thought. But for the tangible things about him there might have been elfin mischief in the air, for the last few days had passed with such flash of new feeling and desire that the man's mind was still in a daze. He lay in bed, with j

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 t

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

Book II GORLOIS I RADAMANTH the goldsmith was held in no little honour, and esteem by the townsfolk of Winchester. Even the market women and the tavern loungers stood aside for him in the street as he made his stately march in black robe and chain of gold. He was a man possessed of those outward vir

II SPLENDID in arms, magnificent in fortune, Gorlois of Cornwall held high place in the war lore and romances of the green isle of Britain. Ask any pikeman or gallowglass whose crest he would have advance in the van in the tough tussle of a charge home, and he would tell you of Gorlois or of Uther.

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 holdin

IV RADAMANTH'S words to the girl proved very true before many days had gone; his prophetic belief in Gorlois's mood found abundant justification in the event. Gorlois had the warm imagination of his race, an imagination that found extravagance and rich taste ready ministers to work his purpose. Igra

V NOT a word of Uther yet, no sound of his name in Winchester, though Igraine lived on in Radamanth's house, and hoped for light in the dark. Gorlois had had the truth, and she wondered what would come of it. Lulled by an ingenuous reasoning into the belief that she would be free of the man, she beg

VI IGRAINE found lodging that night in the great abbey of St. Helena that Pelleas had spoken of on their ride from the island manor. Posing to the portress as one who had wandered long after her escape from Avangel, she was taken to the refectory, where supper was being spread by the juniors. The wo

VII WHILE Igraine slept in the abbey dormitory and dreamt of Pelleas, the man Gorlois burnt on the grid of his own passions, and found no peace for his soul. The night sky was not a whit more black than his spirit, and his sinister cogitations were chequered ever with palpitating points of fire. The

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 les

IX RADAMANTH the goldsmith had not wasted the hours since his niece had fled Winchester and his house in the dark. He was a man who did not let an enterprise slip into the limbo of the past till he had attempted honestly, and dishonestly, for that matter, to bring it to a successful issue. He had se

X IGRAINE forded the brook and followed the man by the winding path that curled away into the wood. She was ever a sanguine soul, and the mere sinister influences that might have discouraged her in her purpose that morning were impotent before the level convictions of her heart. She had seen Pelleas

BOOK III THE WAR IN WALES I AURELUS AMBROSIUS the king was dead, taken off in Winchester by the hand of a poisoner. He had been found stark and cold in his great carved bed, with an empty wine-cup beside him, and a tress of black hair and a tress of yellow laid twined together upon his lips. The sig

II WHEN Gorlois and his knights had gone, Igraine unbarred the door, and passed down the narrow stair to the state chamber of the house, where a fire was burning. It was a solemn room, shadowed with many arches, with vaults inlaid with marble, its walls painted green and gold, its glimmering casemen

III A MAN in black armour, a lady in a cloak of sables, a pine forest under a winter sky. Myriad trunks interminably pillared, grey-black below, changing to red beneath the canopy of boughs; patches of grey-blue sky between; a floor overgrown with whortleberry and heather, and streaked seldom by the

IV THE sun had rolled back between the pylons of the west. Night was in the sky, night in her winter austerity--keen, clear, aglitter with stars as though her robe were spangled with cosmic frost. The mountains' rugged heads were dark to the heavens, and the sea lay a faintly glimmering plain open t