He half rose on his pillows in his enthusiasm. Igraine put him gently back, and took up the bowl of bread and fruit.
“That will do, my dear Pelleas,” she said; “now just lie still and have your breakfast.”
What boots it to chronicle at length their sojourn in the island manor. Twelve days Igraine nursed the man there, giving all her heart for service, tending him from sunrise to the fall of night. She seemed to have no other joy than to sit and talk to him, to make music with voice and hand, to keep his couch posied round with flowers. On waking Pelleas would find her by him, fresh as the dawn and full of a golden tenderness; at night his eyes closed upon her gracious figure as she sat in the gloaming and sang. She was near to hear his voice, quick to see his needs and to remedy them with soft hands and softer looks. The very atmosphere about the man seemed touched and mellowed by her, and the hours seemed to trip to the measure of a golden rhyme.
Pelleas mended very rapidly under her care. His wound, sweet and innocent, gave him no trouble save some slight feverishness on the third day. The sixth morning found him so stalwart of temper that Igraine consented to his leaving bed for a morning provided he obeyed her to the letter. His first steps were taken in the atrium with Igraine’s arm about his waist, and his upon her shoulders. So well did he bear himself that the girl led him to the chapel, and there side by side on the altar steps they winged up their devotion to heaven. Igraine’s prayers, be it known, were all for love; Pelleas’s for the threatening shadows over his own soul.
Daily after this innovation Igraine would make him a couch under the great cedar tree in the garden, where he could rest shaded from the sun, and there, morn, noon, and eve, they had much comradeship and speech together. They would talk of God, the saints, and the souls of men, of love and honour, and the needs of Britain. Pelleas would tell her of his own service with Aurelius, of all the fair pomp of Lesser Britain, where Conan had begun a goodly kingdom years ago, and where many British folk had taken refuge. He had been to Rome as a boy, and he described that vast city to her, or told her of the bloody fields he had seen when the steel of Christendom met the heathen. Fresh streams from either soul welled out, and mingled much during those summer days. Pelleas and Igraine looked deep each into the heart of the other, finding fine store of nobleness, of truth, and of things beautiful, till the heart of each had treasured everything for love and for love’s desire. They were fair hours and very sweet to the two. The day seemed a casket of gold, and the night a bowl of ebony ablaze with stars.
About this time the man Pelleas began to go down into deep waters. Many days had passed with a flare of torches in the west; their sojourn was drawing to a close, and the night seemed near. The haler Pelleas grew in body, the more halt and hopeless waxed his soul. The whole world seemed to grow wounded to his eyes; the west was wistful at evening, and the starry sky a sob of pain. When Igraine harped and sang, each note flew like winged death into his heart. He had no joy that was not smitten through with anguish, no thought that was not crowned with thorns. It was a very simple matter indeed, but perverse to utter bitterness. Pelleas saw no hope for himself in the end. He would rock and toss, and think at night till the darkness seemed to crush him into a mere mass of misery. Above all there seemed to rise a great hand holding a cross of gold, and a voice that said, “Beware thy soul and death.”
Not so was it with Igraine. To her life had no shroud, and love prophesied of love alone. She knew what she knew, and her heart was full of summer and the song of birds. Pelleas loved her; she would have staked her soul on it, though she did not realise the desperate turmoil passing in the man’s clean heart. Knowing what she did, she was all for sun and moods of radiant thought and happiness. Each day she imagined that she would tell Pelleas of her secret; each day she gave the golden moment to the morrow. She knew how the man’s face would flame up with the fulness of great wonder, and like a woman she hoarded anticipation in her heart and waited.
The day soon came when Pelleas declared himself hale enough to bear armour, though the admission was made with no great amount of satisfaction. To test his strength he armed himself with Igraine’s help, harnessed his black horse, and rode round the island, first at a level pace with Igraine running beside him. Then he tried a gallop, handling spear and shield the while. Lastly, he took Igraine up to him, and rode with her as he had ridden through the wold. Suffering nothing from these ventures, and seeming sure in selle as ever, he declared with heavy heart that they should sally for Winchester on the morrow.
Pelleas and Igraine passed their last evening in the island under the great cedar in the garden. The place had deep memories for them, and very loth were they to leave it, so fair and kind a refuge had it proved to them in peril. Neither said much that evening, for their thoughts were busy. As for Pelleas, he was glum and heavy-browed as thunder, with a look in his deep eyes that spelt misery. It was as though he were leaving his very soul in the place to ride out like a corpse on a pilgrimage with despair. How much she might have eased him, perhaps Igraine never knew.
The west was already red and rosy, and there was a green hush over the meadows, and a canopy of pale porphyry in the east. All the soul of the world seemed to lift white hands to the night in a stupor of mutest woe. Yet the girl’s mood tended towards mere sensitive regret, for the future was not dark to her imaginings.