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.