Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  A fine piece of singing it is, but were it ten times better than it is it could not keep me one moment longer from that pie. Come, Héloïse, let us to it. As soon as his back was turned Héloïse beckoned to Abélard in the street below, and as if he understood her he threw his disguise to the minstrel from whom it was borrowed, and two or three minutes after he was with them, telling the Canon that his appreciation of the minstrels had kept him. They sang well, did they not? Very well indeed, the Canon answered; that baritone, I could have listened to him for an hour had it not been for the pie in front of you, master, for though the singing was good, the pie is better; and now let me fill your glass with wine; we will drink to Madelon’s pie and to the minstrel’s song, for that too is worthy of a toast; but not another word to me; speak to Héloïse if she will listen, for she is your pupil. I am not, and can think only of ridding myself of the hunger that I have borne too long. Another jug of wine will do neither of us any harm, and there is still another helping for you in the dish, Abélard. Madelon, the Canon called, another tankard of wine. Ah, the wine is good and smooth on the palate, as good as I have drunken this many a year, and were the minstrels within call I would have them up here to meat and drink, for that piece of music was a fine piece, well turned in its every period. And the baritone — Yes, the baritone, Abélard answered, has a fine voice: he can troll it out, and if I could remember the melody — Can’t you recall it, Pierre Abélard? Your ear is a keen one, for after hearing a tune once you know it in all its turns and twists. I think that with time I might recall the whole of the piece and give it to you, Reverend Canon, written correctly. I know we have here a great philosopher, the Canon said, and as it would seem he is doubled with a musician, thy fortune, Héloïse, is made, for every girl should know music, and who could teach music better than he who can hear a concert in the street and keep it in his mind, melody and variations? Would you have me join music to my usual instruction, Reverend Canon, of her who is your niece and my pupil? That is a question I must turn over in my head before I can give you an answer, for her thoughts are on the Latin poets and it might not be well to distract her from these by adding music to your instruction. It shall be as you wish, Reverend Canon, Abélard answered, and he pressed more wine on the Canon, hoping that wine and beefsteak, aided and abetted by pigeon-breast and hard-boiled eggs, would induce sleep.

  To be kept another night from Héloïse might rob him of all reason, and half-an-hour later, in spite of her prayer for patience, he might have fallen on his knees before her, deeming the Canon to be already asleep. Thou knowest not my uncle, she whispered, drawing him to the window, which was as far as she could take him from the Canon’s chair. He may be shamming sleep. Thou knowest not my uncle. He is sly, and were he to suspect us we should be separated for ever. Have a care for my sake, for the hour will not be long in passing, and as soon as he wakes he will have no thought but for his pillow. That hour will be an eternity to me, Abélard replied, and that thou canst bear it without too much suffering casts doubt on thy passion; a poor thing it must be. It cannot be that thou art aching as I am, Héloïse, he pleaded. But she held her finger up for a sign; she besought silence with her eyes, and pushing him from her, she forced him to read, if not to read, to pretend to read, till with a great cry the Canon rose out of his chair and, without bidding either of them goodnight, stumbled from the room. Now we can love each other, Abélard cried. My lover, have patience, for there is a dread in me that my uncle will return. And ere long, as if possessed by evil thoughts, the Canon returned to the room, pleading the need of a book to put him to sleep. It cannot be that he will come back again, Abélard said. It may be that he’ll read himself to sleep, she answered, but her eyes said to him that she would not endanger their nuptials with an unseemly interruption; and to help him to further patience she asked him to tell her why he came with the minstrels disguised as one of them, a question that recaptured his kindly humour, and he began twanging the lute while telling her. We have awakened the Canon, he said, laying the lute aside. But it was not Abélard’s incontinent strumming that had awakened him; a little insomnia was upon him and he had returned to ask Abélard if he might share the lesson, a request to which Abélard was obliged to accede. Have you, Reverend Canon, any knowledge of the instrument? The Canon answered that he had often tried to learn the lute, but had failed, a failure that was not difficult to understand, for his admission was that he had always found a great difficulty in tuning the instrument. Abélard denied the imperfection of the Canon’s ear, and condoned his mistakes when to deny them was impossible. The presence of Héloïse sitting opposite gave him courage to bear with his tormentor; and a full hour had to wear itself away before the Canon’s eyes were again loaded with sleep. You must be weary too, he said; so to your rooms, he continued, and they parted, the lovers to lie in their beds angry and disheartened by the evil luck that had befallen them.

  And then it seemed to Abélard as if he must escape from the house, and he weighed his career against his love of Héloïse, knowing all the while that he must abide with her. Come what may, he must abide. But to be near her yet without her seemed more than he could bear, and he bethought himself of the Seine as a means of escape from the sleepless Canon, who continued to wander about the house. Every halfhour his feet were on the stairs. Does he suspect us? Abélard asked himself, and next morning he affected more rage than was in his heart against the Canon, and she answered him: thou knowest what my uncle is, so why rage like this and make me unhappy? Thinkest that I did not rue thine absence from my couch as much as thou? Didst burn for me, Héloïse? he said, and the lovers came to their peace in a kiss — to a momentary peace, for the kiss inflamed Abélard, and he fell to telling how he barely kept himself to his bed, whilst thou, he said, lay indifferent, forgetful of me, perchance. Worse than forgetful of me, for thou wert forgetful of love itself or else would have been by my side, come what may. Was I then so indifferent to love when I was with thee? she asked; so indifferent that I deserve reproaches? And hast thou forgotten that it was the first time I was in a man’s arms? I should not reproach thee for indifference, Héloïse; thou wert all thou shouldst have been and more, and that is why a night of abstinence was hard to bear. Sleep was very far from me, and all night I lay thinking of thee. Was that, she asked, so unnatural that thou comest with a complaint on thy lips? Lovers, Héloïse, should think always of each other, and in the courts of love that I visited when I wrote songs for the Comte de Rodebœuf, Queen Elinor decreed that a true lover is enthralled with a perpetual image of his lady-love; it never departs from the mind. She has ruled it thus. Nor wast thou absent for a single moment of the long night, in all becoming lights and shades and in all attitudes exciting to the senses. Didst sleep, then? Héloïse asked. Sleep! not a wink, he answered. The best moment was when between sleeping and waking, thou camest to me with a lamp in thy hand. But, Abélard, I could not come, for Madelon and my uncle talked away the morning on the stairs outside my room, relating of their different sicknesses or else of the rising prices in the market. I could not come to thee, and thou canst not doubt that I am telling thee the truth. I waited, hoping that my uncle and Madelon would part, would stop their chatter and lie down together or separate. I cared not which, for I was thinking of thee. But at last their chatter lulled me to sleep, and I slept so deeply that if thou hadst come I should have needed shaking before I could welcome thee for a kiss. I should have wished thee to come with a lamp, Héloïse, in thy hand, and all the light of it flowing down thy naked body, for so thou wouldst seem in my eyes more beautiful than in any vain garment. It was thus that I thought of thee all the long hot night through; the door opening and a white arm holding a lamp high. For should it come to pass that we, Héloïse, spend a night or part of a night together it must not be without a lamp. Would it please thee, Abélard, to see me naked? It would be a gracious deed, Héloïse, for thee to come with a lamp to my couch, for this would tell me how vainly I have pictured thee, yet it seemed that thou
wert fair enough in my imagination. My hands remember thy small breasts as mere handfuls, and thy face foretells me now the great summer whiteness of thy body. But my summer is not yet come, Abélard, she said; I am but the month of April. Call me not the month of March, for this is a cold month, and I am not cold. A fair month indeed, he answered, is the month of April, one not to be despised, though the month of May is a better month, and the month of June is —

  Well, June is a month for the Gods. But thy June, Héloïse, is many months distant, and waiting for it shall be my joy. Wilt grow tired of waiting? she asked. Tired of waiting? How little thou knowest yet about love. A true love never tires or wanes, Héloïse, but is with us always, like our blood, like our breath. I shall never weary of that brow nor those grey, wistful eyes. I thought last night to teach thee many fair practices; wouldst learn from me, Héloïse? I would, and from none other, she said. And wilt come as I picture thee, holding a lamp high, for I would see all thy roundness in the fair glow? But, Abélard, is there naught in me but a body that will waste in thine imagination each time of seeing it? There is much, Héloïse, besides thy body. Thy mind is as agreeable to me; we have spent delightful hours together reading the Latin poets hour after hour without weariness by that window. Abélard, thou hast never wearied of my chatter, though I often feared thou wouldst. But now I hear no word about Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus and Cicero, only supplications to see me naked. Dost think of me differently now? Not so differently, Héloïse, that I have forgotten thy soul. But can we think of the soul and body at the same time? When thou comest to me, the lamp held high, to learn all the sports of love from me, thou wilt not think of my soul — not then — but of thy pleasure, as I shall think of mine. Yet let it not be said that the soul and the intellect of the woman is forgotten by the man, though he cannot love body and soul at the same time. Each is loved in turn; without love of the body the love of the soul is a poor thing without purpose when the twain are side by side on a couch, nor valid even when thou sittest apart from me in a window-seat; for we cannot think in the presence of the loved one, and still less can we dream; we prepare whilst on the couch or in the window-seat for the hours that are to come when the love lady is not by us. So it is only, Héloïse said, when her body is not by him that the lover admires the woman’s mind. But wouldst thou have it otherwise, that he should dream of her body when she is absent and of her mind when she is by him? Abélard, I make no complaint, I am happy in the knowledge that I shall see thee when I return from market, whither I go now with my basket. And do thou profit of this interval to prepare thy lesson, for to-day thou hast to lecture in the Cloister. To-day is not the day that I can take my thoughts off thee, he cried, nor would I take my thoughts from thee if I could. Ask me not, therefore, to prepare a lesson, for I cannot. Nor wouldst thou ask it of me if thou knewest the years of life that I have sacrificed to learning; and now that life comes to me in Héloïse’s sweet shape, am I not to take what the Gods have put within my reach? Put thoughts of love by, she said, for an hour. That thing I cannot do, he answered. Go to thy market and leave me to write songs and to play the lute, and return to hear thyself praised, for there is a song singing in my head that I would write for thee. Since it must be that we separate for a little, let the interval be one of commemoration.

  CHAP. XI.

  WHAT! SHE CRIED, on her return, no song for me to hear? And he confessed to being mistaken in his inspiration; words and music had gone awry. I will not believe it, and she asked him to sing to her. The phrase is well enough, he said, but I am too restless to write song or lecture; come, sit upon my knee. She was barely seated thereon when the sound of footsteps alarmed them and Héloïse with much ado skipped to her seat in time. It was Madelon, and as soon as her question had been answered Héloïse said: I suspect her; we shall have to be careful. But as Abélard could not be contented unless he was fondling her, perforce to put herself out of his mind she could not do else than to ask him to tell her the story that was on his lips yesterday.

  The Canon has told my story, a tiresome one until I met thee, Héloïse, nor is there any danger of his returning; so come and sit upon my knee again. Do not ask me to risk much for very little, she answered, and a long argument began between them whether the pleasure was greater to Abélard to have Héloïse upon his knee or to Héloïse to be sitting there. As hard a matter, she answered, as Nominalism and Realism. Which knee is Nominalism and which is Realism, and where does Conceptualism, thy theory, lie? she asked, springing away from him, for footsteps seemed once more to be moving by the stair-top; and deceived thereby and by some flattery, he yielded himself to her question whither he had gone when he left Melun in search of rest. Whither I went when my health broke down from long study? It is said that I travelled in Germany and in England — And that thy humour is various, she interjected, which is not surprising, for there is a philosopher and a poet in thee, and both seeking for rivalry. Yes, he replied, and a wanderer too, as the Canon has related. My lands in Brittany were surrendered to my brothers and sisters so that I might be free to throw myself into philosophy and wander, as thou hast heard, seeking disputations and controversy with all and sundry, thereby gathering much renown and maybe some glory. And thou hast heard from the Canon of the overthrow of Guillaume de Champeaux and that of Anselm, who in the imagination of the Canon is a man of great genius, but a mistake I would hold this to be, saying rather that Anselm is gifted with a great flow of eloquent phrases, never at a loss in the Assembly Hall; but it is worth no man’s while to go to him with a question, for instead of having the question answered and his trouble allayed, he will come back with twenty more doubts, all more irritating than the first. Thou hast heard from the Canon how I taught in Paris after Champeaux’s retirement, whom I so worsted in argument that he could no longer find pupils who would listen to him, and of my own school at Ste. Geneviève; thou hast heard, too, of my school at Melun, and how I was told that rest was needed, which was true, for of the sweets of rest I had not tasted for many a year; and that when I was ill and unable to give myself to study, the memory of my already ancient wanderings stirred up a great yearning in me to follow the roads once more: April was coming in; blue and white, according to her wont. One evening I heard the thrush singing under a rising moon, and next morning he sang from an elm bough. There was money in my purse, gaiety in my heart, and a lute on my back, and lodgings I found at nightfall; some were pleasant, none too vile, for all the world was abroad: glee-men, acrobats, pedlars, wayfarers, all like myself, were walking ahead seeking their fortunes. My health returned to me at every mile, for it was April. All the world was dancing and singing; the lambs frolicked up the banks and even the heavy sheep skipped when the lambs returned to them; the rooks tumbled over each other in the soft air, and I said: all is that ever was, even I. But I could no longer teach by the road-side; I was no longer a peripatetic philosopher, and might well have returned to Brittany to my father and mother, and to the old Manor House and lands belonging to it, had it not been that Brittany was a long way off and my strength not great enough for the journey. Moreover, lute-playing is not favoured in Brittany as it is in the pleasant Norman land whither I wandered, exchanging one band of minstrels for another, till the day came when I wearied of three garcil churls whom I had fallen in with on their way to a fair — men with little knowledge of music, more apt with dogs that they could train to walk on their hind legs, to jump through hoops, to steal and put the blame upon the cat, and many other diversions of the same kind. One of them could play the vielle and another a pair of regals, and with them was a gleemaiden who danced with two great mastiffs, their four paws on her shoulders. Héloïse asked how she was dressed, and Abélard told her that the gleemaiden was gowned according to custom in azure blue with silver spangles on her skirt.

  As I have said, these minstrels were on their way to a fair, and not caring to accompany them thither, and not wishing to lower them in their own self-esteem, for to do so is a dangerous thing and might have earned
me an evil blow, I feigned to have a return of my illness, and lay down under an oak-tree and bade them good-bye, wishing them, of course, every luck at the fair. They were loath to lose me, for my lute-playing helped them to gather money, but as they could not carry me on their backs, and were without money to buy a horse for me to ride, they departed, and it was with a great unlifting of the spirit that I watched them stumble out of the wood. I must have fallen asleep shortly afterwards and slept maybe for a couple of hours, for the prime of the morning was over when I woke, and looking up I saw a finely accoutred horse bending over me, but he started away from me when I sought to catch his bridle. A horse, I said to myself, belonging to some great noble who will come in search of him; and with some thought at the back of my mind that an acquaintance of this sort would suit my present circumstance, I set myself to capture the horse, which I failed to do till I bethought myself of the plan of filling my hat with pebbles and shaking them, and he, thinking that I was about to bring him corn, let me take him; and I had barely tethered him to a tree when a fine gentleman came riding by, no less a person than the Comte de Rodebœuf mounted on one of his servants’ horses, who, on seeing his horse tethered, said: thou shalt be rewarded for thy capture of my horse, to which I answered: I am a gentleman like thyself, and for the slight service that I have rendered thee I need but the story how it fell out for thy horse to escape, whereupon he told me that his horse had stepped into a rabbit burrow and thrown him. Thy horse came sniffing me while I lay asleep, poking me up as if he missed a master. On that our talk languished. But it broke out again on seeing a lute by me; a gentleman like myself thou art certainly, said Rodeboeuf, from thy speech I can tell that, and the lute tells that thou’rt a musician like myself. So if it be not unpleasing to thee we will sing a song together, for the air is pleasant in this wood, still and sweet. After hearing me sing, he said: we must not part like this. My castle is near by and it is open to thee as long as it pleases thee to remain with me. A fine voice is thine and I have little doubt thou’rt skilled in composition. But didst return, Abélard, with the Comte de Rodeboeuf? Not for many months after, Abélard answered, for the Comte de Rodebœuf is a great trouvère, and spring being by again he had just left his castle to visit his neighbours to help them to forget the tedium of the winter months they had come through with lute-playing and song.