XLIV
Autumn had cast her scarlet girdle about Avalon; the woods were aflamewith the splendours of the dying year. The oaks stood pavilions of greenand gold; the beeches domes of burnished bronze; from their silverstems, birches fountained forth showers of amber. It was a season ofcrystal skies, of cloud galleons, bulwarked with gold, sailing thewine-red west. Wild Autumn wandered in the ruined woods, her long hairstreaking the gilded gloom, her voice elfin under the stars. Even asshe passed, the crisp leaves swirled and fell, a pall for the dyingyear.
Avalon slumbered amid her lilies and the painted woods, gorgeous as raretapestries, curtaining her meadows. Her mere laughed and glimmered amidthe flags and lily leaves, and lapped at the lichened bases of hertowers. Avalon had arisen from her desolation. No longer were herchambers void, her gates broken, her courts the haunt of death. The batand the screech-owl had fled from her towers. She had lifted up herface to the dawn, like a mourner who turns from the grave to gaze againupon the golden face of joy.
Time with his scythe of silver rested on the hills. The black dragon ofwar had crawled sated to the labyrinths of the past; the red throne ofambition had been consumed by fire. Peace came forth with herwhite-faced choir, swinging their golden censers, shedding a purpleperfume of hope over the blackened land. The death wolves had slunk tothe wilds, the vultures had soared from the fields. A splendid calm haddescended upon the land, a silence as of heaven after the hideous masqueof war. The cloud-wrack and thunder had passed from the sky. Men heardagain the voice of God.
Six weeks had gone since the sacking of Gilderoy, and dead Duessa'sbower in Avalon had been garnished for a second mistress. A white roselurked in a whorl of green. The oriel, with its re-jewelled glass,looked out upon the transient splendours of the woods. Tapestry clothedthe walls, showing knights and maidens wandering through floweringmeads. Rare furniture had been taken from the wrecked palaces ofGilderoy and given to the Lord Flavian by the King.
That autumntide Modred played seneschal in Avalon. He had cleansed andregarnished the castle by his lord's command, and garrisoned it with mentaken from the King's own guard. Moreover, in Gilderoy he had found anold man groping miserlike amid the ruins, filthy and querulous. Thepantaloon when challenged had confessed to the name of Aurelius, and theprofession of Medicine by royal patent in that city. The townsfolk hadspared his pompous neck for the sake of the benefits of his craft. Fromthe fat, proud, prosperous worthy he had cringed into a wrinkled,flap-cheeked beggar. Him Modred had caught like a veritable pearl fromthe gutter, and brought with other household perquisites into Avalon.
In this rich refuge Aurelius awoke as from an unsavoury and penuriousdream. He regained some of his plump, sage swagger, his rotundphraseology, his autocratic dogmatism in matters AEsculapian. Theatmosphere of Avalon agreed with his gullet. Above all things, he washeld to be a man of tact.
In dead Duessa's bower there still hung her mirror of steel, whosesheeny surface had often answered to her languorous eyes and moon-whiteface. Duessa's hair had glimmered before this good friend's flattery.Gems, necklet, broideries, and tiars had sunk deep into its magicmemory. The mirror could have told truths and expounded philosophies,had there been some Merlin to conjure with the past.
Aurelius of Gilderoy played the necromancer under more rationalauspices. He was a benignant soul, subtle, sympathetic to the brink ofdotage. His professional hint was that dead Duessa's mirror should beexiled from the bower of Avalon. The oracle spoke with much beneficenceas to the delusions of the sick, and the demoniac influence ofmelancholy upon the brain. Yet his wisdom was withstood in the veryquarter where he had trusted to find obedience and understanding. DeadDuessa's mirror still hung in the Lady Yeoland's bower.
One calm evening, when the west stood a great arch of ruddy gold, a slimgirl knelt in the oriel with her face buried in her hands. She was cladin a gown of peacock blue, fitting close to her slight figure, andgirded about the hips with a girdle of green leather. Her black hairpoured upon her shoulders, clouding her face, yet leaving bare the baseof her white neck where it curved from her pearly shoulders. Shedrooped her head as she knelt before the casement, where the lightentered to her, azure and green, vermilion and purple, silver and rose.
Anon she rose softly, turned towards the mirror hanging on the wall,gazed into its depths with a species of bewitched fear. One glancegiven, she turned away with a shudder, hid her face in her hands, walkedthe room in a mute frenzy of self-horror. Presently she knelt againbefore the window-seat, struggled in prayer, turning her face piteouslyto an open casement where the golden woods stood under the red wand ofthe west. The light waned a little. She rose up again from her knees,shook her hair forward so that it bathed her face, trod slowly towardsthe mirror, stared at herself therein.
The crystal bowl was broken, the ivory throne dishonoured! The blush ofthe rose had faded, the gleam of the opal fallen to dust. Youth and itssapphire shield had passed into the gloom of dreams. The stars and themoon were magical no more.
She wavered away from the window to a dark corner, hid her face in thearras. The same wild cry rang like a piteous requiem through her brain.The man lived and loved her, and she had come to this! Burning Gilderoyhad stolen her beauty, made her a mockery of her very self. God, thatFate should compel her to lift her scars to the eyes of love!
In the gathering dusk, she went again to the mirror, peered therein,with strained eyes and a tremor of the lip. The twilight softenedsomewhat the bitterness of truth. She shook her hair forward, saw hereyes gleam, fingered her white throat, and smiled a little. Presentlyshe lit a taper, held it with wavering hand, peered at the steel panelonce again. She cried out, jerked away, and crushed the frail lightunder her foot.
Darkness increased, seeming to clothe her misery. She wandered throughthe room, twisting her black hair about her wrist, moaning and dartingpiteous glances into the gloom. Once she took a poniard from a table,fingered the point, pressed her hand over her heart, threw the knifeaway with a gesture of despair. On the morrow the man would come toher. What would she see in those grey eyes of his? Horror andloathing, ah God, not that!
Anon she grew calmer and less distressed, prayed awhile, lit a lamp,delved in an ambry built in the wall. That night her hands workedzealously, while the moon shimmered on the mere, setting silver wrinkleson its agate face. The woods were still and solemn as death, deep withthe voiceless sympathy of the hour. Black lace hung upon Yeoland'shands; the sable thread ran through and through; her white fingersquivered in the light of the lamp.
Her few hours of sleep that night were wild and feverish, smittenthrough with piteous dreams. On the morrow she bound a black filletabout her brows, and let the dusky mask of lace fall over face andbosom. She prayed a long while before her crucifix, but she did notgaze again into dead Duessa's mirror.
That same evening Modred the seneschal blasphemed Aurelius in the gardenof Avalon. The man of the sword was in no easy humour; his convictionsemerged from his hairy mouth with a vigour that was not considerate.
"Dotard, you have no more wit than a pelican."
"My lord, I embrace truth."
"Damn truth; what eyes have you for a goodly close!"
Aurelius spread his hands with the air of a martyr.
"The physician, my lord," he said, "should ever deserve the confidenceof his patron."
For retort, Modred shouldered him into the thick of a rose bush.
"Pedant," quoth he, "crab-apple, say a word on this matter, and I willdrown you in the moat."
Aurelius gathered his robes and still ruffled it like an autocrat.
"Barbarity, sir, is the argument of fools."
"Bag of bones, rot in your wrinkled hide, keep your froth for sickchildren."
"Sir!"
"You have as much soul as a rat in a sewer. Come, list to me, breathe aword of this, and I'll starve you in our topmost turret. Leave truthalone, gaffer, with your rheumy,
broken-kneed wisdom. You have no witin these matters, no, not a crust. Blurt a word, and I pack you off togrovel in Gilderoy."
The man of physic shrugged his shoulders, seemed grieved andincredulous, prepared to wash his hands of the whole business.
"Have your way, my lord; you are too hot-blooded for me; I will meddleno further."
"Ha, Master Gallipot, you shall acknowledge anon that I have a soul."
XLV
Trumpets were blowing in Avalon of the Twelve Towers, echoing throughthe valley where the sun shone upon the woods, the sere leavesglittering like golden byzants as they fell. The sky was a clearcanopy, drawn as blue silk from height to height, tenting the greenmeadows. Avalon's towers rose black and strong above the sheen of herquiet waters.
From Gambrevault came the Lord Flavian to claim his wife once more.Through the brief days of autumn Aurelius of Gilderoy had decreed him anexile from the Isle of Orchards, pleading for the girl's frail breathand her lily soul that might fade if set too soon in the noon of love.In Gambrevault the Lord Flavian had moped like a prisoned falcon,listening to the far cry of the war, hungry for the touch of a woman'shand. Modred had snatched the Madonna of the Pine Forest from burningGilderoy. She had been throned at last above the tides of violence andwrong.
That day the Lord Flavian rode in state for Avalon, even as anArthurian, prince coming with splendour from some high-souled quest.The woods had blazoned their banners for his march. Trumpets hailed himfrom the towers and battlements. The sun, like a great patriarch,smoothed his gold beard and beamed upon the world.
Over the bridge and beneath the gate, Modred led his master's horse.The garrison had gathered in the central court; they tossed theirswords, and cheered for Gambrevault. Trumpets set the wild woodswailing. Bombards thundered from the towers.
In the court, amid the panoply of arms, Flavian dismounted, tookModred's hand, leant upon the great man's shoulder.
"Old friend, is she well?"
"Ah, sire, youth turns to youth."
"Let my minstrels play below the stair some old song of Tristan andIseult. And now I go to her. Lead on."
In dead Duessa's bower a drooping figure knelt before a crucifix inprayer. Foreshadowings of misery and woe were stirring in the woman'sheart. She had heard the bray of trumpets on the towers, the thunder ofcannon, the shouts of strong men cheering in the court. She heard lute,viol, and flute strike up from afar a mournful melody sweet with anantique woe.
Time seemed to crawl like a wounded snake in the grass. The figures onthe arras gestured and grimaced; the jewelled glass in the oriel burntin through the dark lattice of her veil. She heard footsteps on thestairs; Modred's deep voice, joyous and strangely tender. A handfumbled at the latch. Starting up, she ran towards the shadows, and hidher face in the folds of the arras.
The door had closed and all was silent.
"Yeoland."
The cry smote through her like joy barbed with bitterness. She shudderedand caught her breath, swayed as she stood with the arras hiding herface.
"Wife, wife."
With sudden strength, compelling herself, she peered round, and saw afigure standing in the shadow, a man with white face turned towards thelight, his hands stretched out like a little child's. She stoodmotionless, breathing fast with short, convulsive breaths, her lipsquivering beneath her veil.
"I am here," she said to him, husky, tremulous, and faint.
"Yeoland."
"Ah!"
"I hear your voice; come near to me."
She wavered forward three steps into the room, stood staring strangelyat the figure by the door.
"Yeoland, are you near?"
"My God!"
"I give myself to you, a broken man. Ah, where are your hands?"
Sudden comprehension seized her; she went very near to him, gazing inhis face.
"Speak."
"Wife, I shall never see the sky again, nor watch the stars at night,nor the moon, nor the sea. I shall never look on Avalon, her greenwoods and her lilies, and her sleeping mere. I shall never behold yourface again. I am blind, I am blind."
She gave a great cry, tore the veil from her face, and cast it far fromher.
"Husband, I come to you."
His hands were groping in the dark, groping like souls that sought thelight. She went near him, weeping, caught his fingers, kissed them withher lips. The man's arms circled her; she hung therein, and buried herhead in his bosom.
"HIS HANDS WERE GROPING IN THE DARK."]
"My love, my own."
"I am blind; your hair bathes my face."
"Ah, you are blind, mine eyes are yours, and I your wife will be yoursun. No more pain shall compass you; there shall be no more grieving,no more tears."
"Yeoland."
"Husband."
"God in heaven, I give Thee thanks for this."
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