Of the bright apparitions two seemed of their full summer and prime, more stately, more authoritative than the others. The others were in their spring and early spring. Light or dark, blonde or brunette, all had beauty. Garin’s eyes darkened and softened, and the corners of his lips moved upward to see such an array, and the swimming movement with which they dispersed themselves over the lawn, and to hear their trained voices. All seemed gay and laughing, and yet there presently appeared a discontent. The dame in daffodil took up the harp and swept the strings.
“Ah!” cried the one in azure, “for a true troubadour!”
“For even a jongleur!”
“Ah, what is life without men!”
“Ah, for the tourney!”
“Ah, if there were in sight but a monastery!”
The older two, who had an air of responsibility, rebuked the others. “Life is made up of to and fro, and sounds and silences! Be content! It is but one month out of many.”
“As if months were as plentiful as cherries!”
“Ah, if I were a princess—”
“Hush!” warned the daffodil-clad, and began to play upon the harp.
Garin saw that another two were coming through the grove. One of these would be the noble lady for whom it was all planned. His imagination was active to-day with a deep, involuntary pulsing. Foix or Toulouse, or the greater domains to the north and west, or it might be Aragon, or it might be Italy? Or she might have come from Sicily, or like Prince Rudel’s far lady, from a kingdom or duchy carved from Paynim lands. Some Eastern touch in the scene made him dwell upon that. No matter whence now she came, she must have lived on a day in the long, the outspread, the curving and sunny lands of this very south. The tongue of her ladies proved that. Wedded she might have been to some great prince and borne away, and now returned for a time and a pilgrimage to the land of birth. … All this and more was of his imaging. He lay upon the dark earth and parted the laurel leaves that he might see more clearly.
The two were now plain among the trees. One was a blonde of much beauty, dressed in grey cendal and carrying a book which seemed to belong to her companion. The latter was a little in advance, and she came on without speaking, and so stepped from the wood upon the lawn. The seven already arrived beneath the plane, the poplar, and the cedar made a formal movement of courtesy, then gathered like a rainbow about the one of first importance. Plaintiveness and discontent retired from evidence, court habit came up paramount. You might have thought that these were dryads or Dian’s nymphs, and no other spot than this wood their loved home! There came to Garin’s ear a ripple of sweet voices, but it seemed that their lady for whom had been spread the feast was either silent or seldom-and low-speaking. She stood beneath the shimmering, tremulous poplar, a slender shape of fair height. She was dressed in some fine weave of dark blue with a girdle of samite studded with gems. The ends of this girdle hung to her silken shoe. Her hair, black and long, was braided with gems. She seemed young, young as the youngest there. “Seemed” is used, because Garin saw not her face. She wore, as did several of the others, a veil of Eastern device, but hers was long and wide and threaded with gold and silver, and so worn that it overhung and shielded every feature.
Attention was called to the placing of the rugs, the cushions, the harp, the dishes of fruit and comfits. The one for whom they had waited nodded her head and seemed to approve. She was not garrulous; there seemed to breathe about her, he knew not what, a tone of difference. All now moved to the water-edge, and for a time loitered there upon the green and rushy bank. One raised her voice and sang—
“Green are the boughs when lovers meet,
Grey when they part—”
The bevy turned and came up the sloping lawn to the three trees and the cushions upon the grass. The shape in dark blue with the Eastern veil moved beyond them to the cedar and the stone chair. Here she took her seat, and when the others would have gathered about her waved them back with a slender, long-fingered hand. One brought to her a basket of grapes. She chose a purple cluster resting upon a web of vine leaves but laid it untouched beside her upon the wide seat. There was a space between her and the dark enshadowing cedar and those others resting now upon the cushions. She sat quite still, a hand upon each arm of the chair, the deep blue of her dress flowing about her, the gems of the girdle ends making a sombre gleaming. The veil hid all her face from Garin, lying so near. He felt in her something solitary, something powerful, yet felt that she was young, young—She sat with her gaze straight before her upon the blue crests that showed afar. She sat as still as though an enchanter had bid her stay. And between her and the young man crouching in the laurels streamed no wide ocean of the autumn air, of the subtle ether. The moments passed, slow, plangent, like the notes of the harp that was being played. …
What happened to one or both? Did one only feel it, the one that knew there were two—or did, in some degree, the other also, and think it was a day-dream? All that Garin knew, kneeling there, was that something touched him, entered him. It came across that space, or it came from some background and space not perceived. It was measureless, or it seemed to him without measure. It was clothed in marvel; it was fulness and redoubling, it was more life. It was as loud as thunder, and as still as the stillest inner whisper. It was so sweet that he wished to weep, and yet he wished too to leap and spring and exult aloud, to send his cry of possession to the skies. He felt akin to all that his senses touched. But as for the form in the stone chair—he sat with her there, she knelt with him here, they were one body. … With a swimming feeling, her being seemed to pass from his. He knelt here, Garin of the Black Castle, squire of Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and she sat there whose face he had not seen—a great dame, lady doubtless of some lord of a hundred barons each worthier than Raimbaut.
Garin gazed across the little space between, and now it was as though it were half the firmament. She sat like a figure among the stars, blue-robed, amid the deep blue, and the cloudy world was between them. She grew like to a goddess—like to the Unattainable Ideal, and he felt no longer like a king, but like the acolyte that lights the lamp and kneels as he places it. Now it was the Age for this to happen, and for one man to act as had acted that knight in the wood toward Roche-de-Frêne, and for another to do as now did Garin.
For now he wished no longer to play the spy, and he turned very carefully and silently in the laurels and crept away. In all his movements he was lithe and clean, and he made no sound that the brooding young figure in the stone chair attended to. Presently, looking back, his eyes saw only the great height of the cedar, its dark head against the blue heaven. The liquid, dropping notes of the harp pursued him a little farther, but when he was forth from the laurel grove they, too, passed upon the air. He was soon at the boundary cross of Our Lady in Egypt, and then upon the waste and stony land that set toward the fief of Castel-Noir. Was it only this morning, thought Garin, that he had come this way? And the nightingale that sang so deep and full—it was not in the boughs above—it was singing now in his own heart!
CHAPTER IV
THE ABBOT
Friday the mistral blew, and Foulque was always wretched in that wind. He gloomed now from this narrow window and now from that in the black castle’s thick walls. The abbot was not expected before the dial showed twelve, but Foulque looked from here and looked from there, and kept a man atop of the tower to scan the road beyond the wood. The hall was ready for the abbot, the arras hung, the floor strewn with leaves and autumn buds, the great chair placed aright, a rich coverlet spread upon the state bed. Pierre was ready—the sauce for the fish, the fish themselves were ready for the oven. Castel-Noir rested clean and festive, and every man knew that he was to sink down upon both knees and ask the abbot’s blessing.
The wind blew and hurled the leaves on high. The sun shone, the sky was bright, but the moving air, dry and keen,