“But that was not the end, surely?” asked Stella, with childlike eagerness. “The day came, of course, when she looked out on life itself, braving any curse which might befall her.”
“Oh, yes; trust her for that. She was a woman as well as a fairy, you see:
“ ‘A bow-shot from her bower-eaves
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.’
He was her fate, I suppose. Anyhow, as a modern writer would say, the ‘exact psychological moment of her life had arrived,’ and:
“ ‘She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“And what was the end?” asked Stella. She had followed each line, conjuring up mental pictures of the scenes. But bold Sir Lancelot she saw in a brown-eyed giant, with a golden mustache drooping over a mouth that was a little hard in outline. And for the lady it was pardonable girlish egotism if she saw herself, living as she did in semi-imprisonment, confined within those “four gray walls” and the demesnes adjacent. What did she herself know more of life than was pictured in the old-fashioned books to which she had access, or hinted at in the prim and guarded talk of her instructors? Of life as it really was, its passion, its pain, its hopes, and fears, and sorrows, its mad delights and long regrets, its brilliant colors and heavy shadows, she knew no more than the Lady of Shalott learned from her mirror as she caught sight of the village maidens and gay young knights reflected there. Until he came! And how would it end after that, she wanted to know.
“Oh, poor Lady of Shalott, she had better have been content with her looking-glass and her needlework,” said Lord Carthew. “Apparently, she went straight to her death resignedly, after falling in love at first sight with Lancelot. She ‘found a boat, beneath a willow left afloat, and round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott.’ In this she was wafted up along the river to ‘many-towered Camelot,’ where all the gay knights and ladies were enjoying themselves, foremost among them being Sir Lancelot of the Lake, lover of Queen Guinevere:
“ ‘Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.’
Then they all came out and looked at her, and read her name on the prow.
“ ‘Who is this? and what is here?’
And in the lighted palace near,
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights of Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ‘She has a lovely face,
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.’ ”