Peter Abelard

by Helen Waddell

  With that, Abelard had been content. But to-night, in this new sensitiveness, he had gone deeper. Mad, yes: but did one ever think of the agony that came before madness? In what deep waters had that small cheerful brain struggled till it drowned, and in what dark places had it wandered, till it for ever lost its way? Even at the height of his passion, Abelard had winced when that trusting hand was laid upon his sleeve. He knew that Paris mocked at the old man’s credulity, deriding it for complacent vanity. But there was more than that, thought Abelard. One does not easily suspect where one loves, and Fulbert had loved not Heloise only, but himself. It was the supreme betrayal.

  The forlorn figure was crossing the Parvis now, immeasurably tiny in its emptiness. He was not making for the main cloister gate: another moment, and he would turn into the ruelle to the Rue Sainte Marine, and so down the Rue de l’Enfer to the dark house above the river from which the light had been stamped out. It was with no knowledge of what he would do or say that Abelard leapt to his feet, flung his hood over his shoulder, and dashed down the stair. Only he knew that somehow he must see Fulbert face to face, and hold him till he could tell him that at least he knew the full measure of his wrong. Most folk were indoors at their supper, and there was no one to stay him, yet the old man, once in sight of his refuge, must have hurried at the last, for with all Abelard’s striding he only overtook him on the step of his own house. He had hurried even more at hearing the quick step behind him, and now stood hunched close to the door, his back turned to whatever visitor it might be. But Grizzel was long in opening these days, and it gave Abelard his chance.

  “Fulbert,” he said. His throat was dry, and he had to swallow to get out the word.

  Fulbert turned reluctantly. He had not recognised the husky voice. But when he lifted his eyes, and saw the familiar amazing presence, his shrunken body strung taut as a striking adder. He opened his mouth, but though the lips moved, no words came. Only the tiny hands, grimy with dirt, reached out before him, thrusting the loathed bulk away. It was the sight of the small grimy hands that broke Abelard’s heart, and gave him wisdom, though not for himself.

  He stepped back a pace.

  “Master Fulbert,” he said humbly. “I have come to ask if you will give me your niece in marriage.”

  He did not know what he was going to say until he said it. But suddenly with the words it seemed to him that a great wind that had been blowing in his ears fell silent, and that he was filled with a clear shining, such as must come to a redeemed soul after death.

  Fulbert was gazing at him, his hands no longer thrusting, but clasping and unclasping above his stained soutane. At last he spoke.

  “Marriage?” he whispered. “Marriage?”

  “In marriage,” said Abelard gravely. So happy was he, so like a forgiven child, that he stood there smiling down at Fulbert, gentleness in his eyes. And suddenly Fulbert reached out his hands to him as a child might, crying loudly, unashamedly, a desperate crying that only knew the depth of its despair because it has begun to hope. Abelard was standing with his arm about him, supporting him, when Grizzel’s bearded countenance came round the door. Still holding him he passed inside, and the door was shut.

  CHAPTER II

  It was very quiet in the wood: Abelard, following the bridle-path to Beaupréau, reined in for a moment at the edge of a clearing. The birds had been loud all morning after a night of rain, but now there was no sound from them, except for a single wood-pigeon. It must be long past noon. If he had not missed his way at starting, he would have been at Le Palais by now. As it was, he would be lucky to reach it before sundown, and he must read the Good Friday Office in the forest. Perhaps, he admitted wryly, it would be with more devotion than if Heloise were kneeling beside him.

  He slid to the ground, and opening his saddlebag, got out his missal and a crust of bread. He stood beside the mare for a while, stroking her nose, and then opened the palm of his hand to the soft nuzzling lips. There was no reason why the beasts should fast, he thought, even though it were Good Friday: they had not betrayed their Maker. Though even as a small boy he had noted that the creatures seemed to keep Good Friday as devoutly as men did, though with no mourning, but a kind of small secret happiness. Never, as far as he could remember, had Good Friday been wild or cold, though he had shivered through many an Easter Sunday. But that day seemed halcyon, and even small things on the ground, budding briars and yellow gorse and the tiny fists of curling bracken, had a kind of radiance about them. Strange, the day that once began with darkness and ended with earthquake. Leaning with one arm flung across the mare, he began to read.

  “Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn and he will heal us; he hath smitten and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

  “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?”—The proud head twisted round, the soft nozzle thrust between him and the missal, sniffing at it distrustfully. Abelard closed it and laid it down on the solid green cushion of the furze.

  “There’s nothing there for you, girl,” he said fondly. “Try the green grass.” He led her across the open sward to the low branch of an oak, tethered her, and came back to his book.

  “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away. Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth.”

  The words were at variance with the gentleness of the day: they echoed the jarring note, like an owl’s hoot, that had marred his peace. For though the quiet exaltation that had come upon him when first he spoke to Fulbert had lasted with him all these days of his ride to Brittany, it had been rudely shaken by Gilles. He had gone to see him the morning after, full of his plans. Gilles listened and said nothing.

  “What do you think of it, Gilles?” he had asked, suddenly diffident.

  “Quem deus vult perdere,” said Gilles, and would say no more. Then when Abelard pressed him, “You are one of the fools,” he bit the words as he said them, “who think that you can call back yesterday. You think words can make all, and break all. Fulbert is mad, and now I think you are as mad as he. Abelard, the married man—there’ll be fine songs about you now.”

  Abelard flushed. “He has promised to keep it secret. He says he will be content if he alone and his kinsmen know that she is my wife. He knows it would be the end of all things for me. He has given me his word.”

  “He has given you his word?” said Gilles, dangerously smooth. “That is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.”

  “He means to keep it. He swore it”—in spite of himself his eyes began to twinkle and a laugh crept into his voice—“on his relic, you know, the funny little knuckle of the spine of St. Evroul, that he got from the King’s chaplain.”

  Gilles looked at him sourly, but the candles had begun to gleam in his eyes.

  “Will you get out of my sight, Peter?” said he. “They say Providence has a care for children and fools, but I have small use for either.”

  His eyes were on his book again: he would not watch Abelard go. Abelard had reached the door: suddenly he turned and came back.

  “You might give me your blessing, Gilles,” he said soberly.

  Gilles looked up at him. There was an odd look, almost of misery, in the small pig’s eyes.

  “I have never cared much for anyone in all my life,” he said irrelevantly, “and I have no mind to begin doing it at seventy. I will give you no blessing. I believe it would be better to wish you a broken neck than a happy end to your journey.”

  Abelard’s jaw stiffened.

  “Better a broken neck than broken faith, you�
�ll say,” went on Gilles. “You have had too much trade with words, Peter. But a man patches leather with leather and iron with iron. Now go. Take Heloise my greeting, and tell her I agree with every word she will say. And that’s all you will get from me.”

  The mare was munching steadily, now and then blowing through its nostrils and shaking its head.

  “O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid; O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.”

  Sadly Abelard read on.

  “O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the good thief the reward of his confession: grant us the effect of thy clemency, that as our Lord Jesus Christ, in his passion, gave to each a different retribution, according to his desert, so he would deliver us from our old sins, by grace of his resurrection; who liveth.”

  It might not be repentance, his agony for Fulbert’s grief, but perhaps, on Good Friday, it might be counted to him for desert. By grace of his resurrection: who liveth. A small blue butterfly flickered past him, and lit swaying on a tuft of flowering gorse. His heart leapt.

  “Now let us praise together

  This earth that is new-stirred,

  And happy be the lover

  Who knows his prayer is heard

  By grace of Her

  Whose altars——”

  He stopped aghast. What blasphemy was this that he was humming in the midst of the Passion? His mouth set. At least he could lay this penance on himself. He would not lie at Le Palais to-night. He would ride down now to Beaupréau and say the Tenebrae with old Hervé the priest, and watch the Sepulchre till dawn. It would be some small amends for that night of Holy Week, a year ago, and his graceless memory now.

  The level sunlight through the east window was shining red on Abelard’s eyelids. He blinked and awoke. He was lying on the floor beside the Sepulchre where last night he had helped old Hervé to carry the rough wooden cross. Hervé himself was brushing the earthen floor with a besom of twigs, busy and intent, looking, with his short legs and rounded rear, like a small white dog. Abelard sat up, bewildered. He must have fallen asleep, and Hervé had covered him with his cloak.

  “Why did you not waken me, Hervé?”

  “Young things need their sleep,” said Hervé placidly, speaking from his eighty years. “You had a good intention, but you had ridden a many miles. Maybe, now that you are wakened, you will say Prime with me? It is not often I have company for it. But there’s no hurry. It’s barely five o’clock.”

  Abelard stooped to pass under the lintel, and stepped out into the early light. He stood leaning against the door-post, and looked about him. The tiny church, with buttresses shoring it up as big as itself, seemed so old and overgrown that it might be a boulder fallen from the hillside into the long green meadow that gave Beaupréau its name: it looked as ancient as the Druid stone, sunk among the elder-bushes beside it. The moss on the thatch was gold-green in the light: and under the eaves, on a level almost with his head, a brooding swallow looked at him with bright, indifferent eyes. There had been heavy rain in the night—it had been a wet spring; he had noted coming through the Loire country how many pools caught the sky in the forest, and even in the open fields. Here, a corner of the meadow was under water; he crossed over to it, thinking to bathe his hands and face, and hesitated, unwilling to break the surface of that shallow world. Each small green blade stood up, distinct and delicate in this strange medium of another element; he saw the faint pink of the daisy-buds tight closed: and farther away, where the ground sloped under the trees, the white stems of the long grass gleamed in deeper but still translucent stretches of quiet water. It was more mysterious, he thought, than when one looks through shallow water at the bottom of a pond. This was the world he knew, but with another element added to it, not unclothed, but clothed upon, mortality swallowed up of life. Then he heard the old man calling him, and went back, stumbling at the downward step into the green gloom of the church, to kneel before the stripped altar with its empty tabernacle and unlit candles. Hervé kept by the old ways, he said: it was not till evening that he would make the fire outside with a flint on the great stone—some said it was a Druid stone, but it had kindled Christ’s fire often enough since to sain it—and from that, light the candles on the altar: and from them the whole parish would light its Easter fire.

  It was still early, barely six o’clock, when Abelard turned to look back from the crest of the hills. The grey church looked more than ever like a rock, and the tiny parsonage no bigger than a beehive. He could see Hervé coming and going, spreading patches of white on the elder-bushes about the house: the altar-cloths, most likely, to have them white for to-morrow’s feast. The Druid stone and the elder-trees and the immemorial oaks: surely it must take a stout heart to live solitary amid the ancient wickedness: but then Hervé also was old, and the ancient wickedness seemed harmless enough that April morning.

  For an hour or more the way led through the forest: then it skirted the side of a hill, with a great clump of yew-trees climbing to the crest of it. Those yew-trees were the landmark: hereafter Abelard would be riding on Le Palais land. He came out on the hill-top, and halted the mare: for a while he sat there, his hand shading his eyes. Below him lay the wide plain, vineyard and tilth and pasture, shimmering with the warm sun upon the rain-wet earth, and from the misty distance that was Nantes the road from Nantes to Poitiers winding through it. It might have been quicker after all if he had kept the road to Nantes, he thought, instead of trying the short cut through the woods from Saumur: but he would rather have his forest vigil that was no vigil in the end, than spend the night at Nantes in the canons’ lodging at St. Pierre.

  His eye followed the road, with the blue glint of the Sèvre beside it for a while: then the smaller road that struck off to the left, and ran through fields, most of them ploughed: and so to a little huddle of grey roofs, like pebbles by a stream, and above them, on the only cliff for miles of level land, the ancient shabby keep. Never had he looked upon it so, coming from a great way off, and something moved in his breast like the fluttering of a bird’s wing. Quoniam advena sum et peregrinus: of his own choice he came to it an alien and a stranger, he that might have lived and died there, and ploughed and sown, and begotten many sons on Heloise. Well, he had chosen. Plato and Aristotle might be barren pastures, but so were the fields of the stars.

  He had two ways before him: to go down the hillside to the plain, and ride through the vineyards till he struck the road that wound up through the village to the keep: the other, to keep left along the hills that ringed the plain till he dropped down on the bogland where the Sanguèze had its springs, where he and Guibert used to come for snipe. There was a bridle-track by the river all along the valley: he could follow it to the mill dam below the cliff, leave his horse at the mill and cross the stones at the ford, and climb the cart-track, and so come upon her unawares, it might be in the orchard, feeding the chickens, like flecks of moving sunlight in the grass. His hand shook on the bridle, thinking of it: he pulled up the mare’s head and turned her to the left. It was the longer way, but time was standing still for him. The world was like the pool in the green meadow: the clear water was far above his head.

  So it was that he did come upon her unawares, but not in the orchard. Half a mile from the cliff above the river the valley widened and ran back into the hills, leaving a clear space like a triangle with the river at its base: it was full of hazel copses and willow, with little tracks among them that he and his brothers and how many generations before them had made, gathering wild strawberries in June, nutting in the wood smoke of brown October days. They had been faggoting here, he saw, but had not finished stacking them: the faggots lay here and there as they had been tied, strangely black against the quick green of the grass, and growing among them as though the sunlight had spilled itself, the primroses lay in drifts. He reined in the mare that he m
ight look at it. Something older stirred in him than the movement of his heart at the sight of his ancient roof-tree. He saw the faggots, dead in spring, with their promise of winter fires: the eternal rhythm of the seasons spoke to his blood: he saw the succession of life and death, and the hearth that gave life unto the world.

  So when as it seemed to him his eyes were opened and he saw her, it was with no surprise, with hardly a quicker beat of his pulse. How should she not be here, that was the stillness in the heart of flame, the beauty of all beauty? She had been kneeling, gathering primroses, and now moved out from the stack of faggots that had hidden her, but he had no thought for that, nor how it was that at first the valley had held all the promise of the earth but this, and then had flowered in her. She stood there, holding up her long green gown to make a lap for the flowers, her head bowed, gravely pondering. Have you gathered enough, O Beloved, for the woodland rides of the world? For in that green lap lies the seed of mortal beauty, the sap of ancient trees, the white flower of the thorn.