VII
Igraine’s thoughts were to music when she went to bed that night. Pelleas’s eyes stayed with her, darkly, sadly; his tragic face seemed to look out of the night, like the face of one dead. And he more than liked her. She felt sure of that, even if she did not dream of kinder things sprung from long looks and quiet sighings. She sat on her bed, and smiled the whole strange day over to herself again. She had the man before her in all his looks and poses; how he sat his horse, the habit he had of looking deeply into nothingness, his strength and quiet knightliness, and above all his devout soul. He seemed to please her at every point in a way that set her thrilling within herself with a delicious wonder. Last, she thought of the weird twilight under the grand old tree—rare climax to a day of deeds and memories. She felt her heart leap as she remembered the great wistful look that had shone out on her from Pelleas’s eyes.
The manor house seemed still as the night itself. Morgan la Blanche had taken herself to a couch in the triclinium, choosing it rather than one of the cubicles leading from the atrium. Galerius was on guard, pacing the mere’s bank, while his comrade slept in the kitchen. Pelleas, armed, with sword and shield beside him, had quartered himself on cushions in the great porch, with the doors open.
It was about ten o’clock. Igraine, full of sweet broodings, crept into bed, and settled herself for sleep. The night was wonderfully peaceful. The window of the room was overgrown with a tangle of roses, the flowers seeming to mellow the air as it came softly in, and there was a faint shimmer into the shadows that hinted at moonlight. Igraine lay long awake, with her eyes on the few stars that peeped through between the jambs. There was too much in her heart to let sleep in for the while, and her thoughts were a’dance within her brain like wild, fleet-footed things. As she lay in a happy fever of thought, her face grew hot upon the pillow, and her tumbled hair was like a lustrous lava flow over the bed. In course, despite her tossing, she fell into a shallow, fitful sleep that verged between wakefulness and dreams.
It was well past midnight when she started, wide awake, with the half-dreamt memory of some eerie sound in her ears. She sat up in bed, and listened, shivering. There were footfalls, swift and light, on the pavement of the atrium. From somewhere came a gruff voice, speaking tersely and in bated tones. Next, there was something that sounded like a groan, and then silence.
Igraine crept out of bed, hurried on her habit, opened the door gently, and looked out. Moonlight streamed in through the square aperture in the roof of the hall, but all else lay in darkness. The porch gates were ajar, with a band of light slanting through upon the tiles. Eager, tremulous, she fancied as she stood that she heard the beat of oars. Then the low, groaning cough that she had heard before thrilled her into action like a trumpet cry.
She was across the court in a second, and into the darkened porch. The doors swung back to her hands, and the night streamed in. Clear before her, lit with a silver emphasis, lay the water, and on it she saw the dark outline of the barge, moving with foaming oars towards the further bank. For the moment her heart seemed to halt within her.
“Pelleas!” she cried. “Pelleas!”
A stifled sound answered her from a dark corner of the porch. With a sudden frost in her bosom she saw a black rill trickling over the tiles in the moonlight, even touching her feet. Great fear came upon her, but left her power to think. In the triclinium she had seen a lamp, with tinder, steel, and flint in a tray beside it, and in her fear she ran thither, tore her fingers in her haste with stone and steel, but had the lamp lit with such speed as she had never learnt at Avangel. Then she went back trembling into the porch.