Tristram (Robinson)/Canto 4
IV
Tristram, like one bereft of all attention,Saw little and heard nothing until IsoltSprang with a gasp and held her lips to hisAn instant, and looked once into his eyesBefore she whispered in his ears a name,And sprang away from him. But this was notBefore King Mark had seen sufficientlyTo find himself a shadow and Tristram The substance of it in his Queen’s cold eyes,Which were as dark and dead to him as deathAnd had no answers in them.
“Gouvernail,”The King said, after staring angrilyAbout him, “who is lying there at your feet?Turn him, and let me see?”
“You know him, sir,”Tristram replied, in tones of no address:“The name of that you see down there is Andred;And it is manifestly at your service.”
“That was an unbecoming jest, I fear,For you tonight, Tristram,” answered the King.“Do you not see what you have done to him?Andred is bleeding.”
“I am glad of that, sir.So long as there is less of that bad bloodIn him, there will be so much less of Andred.Wash him, and he will be as good as ever; And that will be about as good as warts.If I had been abrupt with him and drowned him,I’d pity the sick fishes.” Tristram’s words,Coming he knew not whence, fell without lifeAs from a tongue without it.
“Gouvernail,”The King said, trembling in his desperation,“The Queen and Brangwaine will go back with you.Come down again with two men of the guard,And when you come, take Andred through the garden.”
“And through the little window he came out of,”Said Tristram, in the way of one asleep.Then, seeing the King as if for the first time,He turned his head to see Isolt once more,Vanishing, and to see for many a nightAnd day the last look in her frightened eyes.But not inured yet fully to his doom,He waited for the King to speak.
“Tristram,”He said, in words wherein his pride and furyTogether achieved almost an incoherence, “My first right is to ask what Andred sawThat you should so mistreat him. Do not hideYourself in silence, for I saw enough.”
Tristram’s initial answer was a shrugOf reckless hate before he spoke: “Well, sir,If you have seen enough, what matters itHow little or much this thing here may have seen?His reptile observation must have gatheredFar less than you prepared him to report.There was not much to see that I remember.”
“There was no preparation on my part,And Andred’s act was of a loyaltyAs well intentioned as it was unsoughtAnd unforeseen by me. I swear to this,Tristram. Is there as much of truth in youAs that, or is there nothing you dare nameLeft of you now that may survive an oath?”
“I know these kings’ beginnings,” Tristram said,Too furious to be prudent, “and I knowThe crafty clutch of their advantages Over the small who cringe. And it appearsThat a place waits for my apologyTo fill for one thing left to thank God for.”
“Tomorrow, if occasion shows itself,Tristram, you may thank God you are alive.Your plea for pardon has the taint of doubtUpon it; yet I shall make a minute of it,Here by the smudge of a sick lamp that smellsOf all I thought was honor.”
Tristram sawConfronting him two red and rheumy eyes,Pouched in a face that nature had made comely,And in appearance was indulgentlyOrdained to wait on lust and wine and riotFor more years yet than leeches might foresee.Meeting the crafty sadness always in them,He found it more than sad and worse than crafty,And saw that no commingled shame and rageLike that which he could see in them tonightWould go out soon. “Damn such a man,” he thought;And inward pain made sweat upon his forehead.“I could almost believe that he believed Himself, if I had never known him better.Possession has a blade that will go deepUnless I break it; and if I do that,I shall break with it everything. Isolt!Isolt and honor are the swords he’ll use,Leaving me mine that I’ve sworn not to use.Honor—from him? If he found Honor walkingHere in Cornwall, he would send men to name it,And would arrest it as a trespasser.How does one take a thrust that pierces two,And still defend the other from destruction?”
“Well, Tristram, knight-at-arms and man of honor,”Mark said, “what last assay have you for meOf honor now? If you were not the sonOf my dead sister, I should be oppressedTo say how long the sight of you aliveWould be the living cross that my forbearanceMight have to bear. But no, not quite that, either.I can at least expunge the sight of youHenceforth from Cornwall, if you care to live.”
“Nowhere among my fancies here tonight, sir,Is there a wish to live and be a cross Upon your shoulders. If you find a figureMore salient and germane to my condition,I might then care to live. Your point of honor,Reduced obscurely to a nothingness,Would hardly be a solid resting-place,Or a safe one, for me. Give me the choiceOf death, or of inflicting more than death,I would not live from now until tomorrow.All said, what have I done? What you have seen.And if there’s any man or Andred breathingWho tells you lies of more than you have seen,Give me his name, and he’ll tell no more lies.Andred is waking up; and if I’ve ears,Here are those guards coming with Gouvernail.Andred, if you were not my lizard-cousin,You might not be awake.”
“I heard that, Tristram,”Groaned a low voice. “I shall remember that.I heard the Queen say, ‘Tristram, I’m all yours—All yours!’ And then she kissed you till her mouthMight have been part of yours. ‘All yours! All yours!’Let the King say if I’m a lizard now, Or if I serve him well.” He snarled and spatAt Tristram, who, forgetting, drew his sword,And after staring at it in the moonlightReplaced it slowly and reluctantly.
“I cannot kill a worm like that,” he said.Yet a voice tells me I had better do so.Take him away—or let the King say that.This is no slave of mine.”
Gouvernail’s menStood as if waiting for the moon to fallInto the sea, but the King only nodded,Like one bemused; and Andred, with an armThrown over each of them, stumbled away.The King gave one more nod, and Gouvernail,Like sorrow in the mould of a bowed man,Went slowly after him.
Then the King said,“Tristram, I cannot trust myself much longer,With you before me, to be more than man.”His fury shook him into a long silence That had an end in tears of helpless rage:“Why have you come between me and my Queen,Stealing her love as you might steal my gold!Honor! Good God in heaven! Is this honor—And after all that I have done for you?”
“Almost as much as buying her with gold,Or its equivalent in peace, was honor.And as for all that you have done for me,There are some tenuous items on my side.Did I not, fighting Morhaus in your name,Rid Cornwall of a tribute that for yearsHad sucked away the blood and life of Cornwall,Like vampires feeding on it in the night?And have I not in my blind gratitudeFor kindness that would never have been yoursIf it had cost you even a night’s rest,Brought you for Queen the fairest of all women?If these two gifts, which are but two, were all,What more, in the King’s name, would the King ask?”
“The casuistries of youth will not go farWith me, Tristram. You brought to me a Queen, Stealing her love while you were bringing her.What weakness is it in me lets you live?”
“I beg your pardon, sir, and for one error.Where there was never any love to steal,No love was ever stolen. Honor—oh, yes!If all the rituals, lies, and jigs and drinkingThat make a marriage of an immolation—”
“By heaven, if you say one more word like that,”The King cried, with his sword half out again,“One of us will be left here!” Then he stopped,As if a bat had flown against his earAnd whispered of the night. “But I will cease,Mindful of who you are, with one more question.You cast a cloud around the name of honorAs if the sight of it were none too sweetIn your remembrance. If it be not honorThat ails you now and makes a madman of you,It may be there’s a reptile with green eyesArrived for a long feeding on your heart—Biting a bit, who knows?”
Tristram could seeIn the King’s eyes the light of a lewd smile That angrily deformed his aging faceWith an avenging triumph. “Is this your wayTo make a madman of me? If it be so,Before you take my reason, take my life.But no—you cannot. You have taken that.”He drew his sword as if each gleaming inchHad come in anguish out of his own flesh,And would have given it for the King to keep—Fearing himself, in his malevolence,Longer to be its keeper. But the King,Seizing his moment, gave Tristram no timeMore than to show the trembling steel, and hearThe doom that he had felt and partly seenWith Isolt’s hope to cheer him.
“You have drawnYour sword against the King, Tristram,” he said.“Now put it back. Your speech to me beforeWas nearer your last than you are near to me—Yet I’ll not have your blood. I’ll have your life,Instead—since you are sure your life means onlyOne woman—and will keep it far from you;So far that you shall hunger for it always. When you go down those stairs for the last time,And that time will be now, you leave CornwallFarther behind you than hell’s way from heavenIs told in leagues. And if the sight of youOffends again my kingdom and infects it,I swear by God you will be chained and burned.And while you burn, her eyes will be held openTo watch your passion cooling in the flames.Go!—and may all infernal fires attend you—You and your nights and days, and all your dreamsOf her that you have not, and shall have never!”
“You know that for her sake, and for that only,You are alive to say this,” Tristram said;And after one look upward at those lightsThat soon would all be out, he swayed and trembled,And slowly disappeared down the long stairs,Passing the guards who knew him with a wordOf empty cheer, regardless of what thoughtsOf theirs were following him and his departure,Which had no goal but the pursuing clutchOf a mad retrospect.
He strode alongUntil there was no moon but a white blur Low in a blurred gray sky, and all those lightsThat once had shone above him and Isolt,And all that clamor of infernal joyThat once had shrilled above him and Isolt,Were somewhere miles away among the agesThat he had walked and counted with his feet,Which he believed, or dreamed that he believed,Were taking him through hell to Camelot.There he would send, or so again he dreamed,A word to Lancelot or to Gawaine,But what word he knew not. There was no word,Save one, that he could seize and separateOut of the burning fury and regretThat made a fire of all there was of himThat he could call himself. And when slow rainFell cold upon him as upon hot fuel,It might as well have been a rain of oilOn faggots round some creature at a stakeFor all the quenching there was in it thenOf a sick sweeping heat consuming himWith anguish of intolerable loss,Which might be borne if it were only loss.But there was with it, always and again, A flame-lit picture of Isolt aloneWith Mark, in his embrace, and with that mouthOf his on hers, and that white body of hersUnspeakably imprisoned in his armsFor nights and days and years. A time had beenWhen by the quick destruction of all elseAnd of himself, he might have spared IsoltBy leaving her alone for lonely painTo prey on till she died and followed himTo whatsoever the dusk-hidden doorsOf death might hide for such a love as theirs;And there was nothing there so foul, he thought—So far as he could think—and out of reason,As to be meted for a sin like theirsThat was not sin, but fate—which must itselfBe but a monstrous and unholy jestOf stronger than fate, sin that had madeThe world for love—so that the stars in heavenMight laugh at it, and the moon hide from it,And the rain fall on it, and a King’s guileAnd lust makes one more shuddering toy of it.He would not see behind him, yet had eyesThat saw behind him and saw nowhere else. Before him there was nothing left to seeBut lines of rain that he could hardly see,And shapes that had no shape along a roadThat had no sodden end. So on he strodeWithout a guiding end in sight or mind,Save one, if there were such an end somewhere,That suddenly might lead him off the worldTo sink again into the mysteriesFrom which his love had come, to which his loveWould drag him back again with ropes of fireBehind him in the rain at which he laughed,As in his torture he might then have laughedAt heaven from hell. He had seen both tonight—Two had seen both, and two for one were chosen,Because a love that was to be fulfilledOnly in death, was for some crumbs of hope,Which he had shared for mercy with Isolt,Foredoomed to live—how or how long to live.With him, he knew not. If it lived with himTonight, it lived only as things asleepIn the same rain where he was not asleepWere somewhere living, as tomorrow’s lightWould prove they were. Tomorrow’s light, he thought, Might prove also that he was living once,And that Isolt was living once where lampsWere shining and where music dinned and shriekedAbove her, and cold waves foaming on rocksBelow her called and hushed and called againTo say where there was peace.
There was no peaceFor Tristram until after two nights’ walking,And two days’ ranging under dripping trees,No care was left in him to range or walk,Or to be found alive where finally,Under an aged oak he cast himself,Falling and lying as a man half deadMight shape himself to die. Before he slept,A shame came over him that he, Tristram,A man stronger than men stronger than he,Should now be weaker than a man unmadeBy slow infirmity into a childTo be the sport of children. Then his ragePut shame away and was again a madness,And then a blank, wherein not even a nameThat he remembered would stay long enough For him to grasp it or to recognize it,Before the ghost of what had been a nameWould vanish like a moonbeam on a tombWhen a cloud comes. Cloud after cloud came fast,Obliterating before leaving clearThe word that he had lost. It was a nameOf some one far behind him in the gloom,Where there were lights above, and music sounding,And the long wash of a cold sea below.“Isolt!” He smiled as one who from a dreamWakes to find he was dreaming and not dying,And then he slept.
When he awoke again,It was to find around him, after fever,A squalid box of woodland povertyIn which he lay like a decrepit wormWithin an empty shell. Through a small squareClear sunlight slanted, and there was outsideA scattered sound of life that fitfullyTwittered and shrilled. In time there was a treadOf heavy steps, and soon a door was open;Then in from somewhere silently there came A yokel shape, unsightly and half-clad,That shambled curiously but not unkindlyTowards the low sodden pallet where TristramLay wondering where he was; and after himCame one that he remembered with a leapOf gladness in his heart.
“You—Gouvernail?”He cried; and he fell back into a swoonOf uselessness too deep for GouvernailTo call him from by kindly word or touchTill time was ready. In the afternoon,Tristram, not asking what had come to pass,Nor caring much, found himself in a cart,Dimly aware of motion and low wordsAnd of a dull security. He slept,And half awoke, and slept again, till stonesUnder the wheels and a familiar glimpseOf unfamiliar walls around a courtTold of a journey done. That night he slept,And in the morning woke to find himselfIn a place strange to him. Whose place it was,Or why he should be in it, was no matter. There he could rest, and for a time forget.So, for a time, he lost the name of life,And of all else except Isolt. . . . “Isolt!”That was the only name left in the world,And that was only a name. “Isolt! Isolt!”
After an endless day of sleep and waking,With Gouvernail adventuring in and outLike some industrious and unquiet phantom,He woke again with low light coming inThrough a red window. Now the room was dim,But with a dimness that would let him seeThat he was not alone. “Isolt!” he said,And waited, knowing that it was not Isolt.
A crooning voice that had within its guileA laughing ring of metal said, “Isolt?Isolt is married. Are you young men neverTo know that when a princess weds a kingThe young man, if he be a wise young man,Will never afford himself another fever,And lie for days on a poor zany’s rags,For all the princesses in Christendom?Gouvernail found you, I found Gouvernail, And here you are, my lord. Forget Isolt,And care a little for your royal self;For you may be a king one of these daysAnd make some other young man as miserableAs Mark makes you. The world appears to be,Though God knows why, just such a place as that.Remember you are safe, and say your prayers.For all you know of this life or the next,You may be safer here than in your shroud.Good night, Sir Tristram, Prince of Lyonesse.”
Days after, vexed with doubt and indecision,Queen Morgan, with her knight a captive now,Sat gazing at him in a coming twilight,Partly in anger, partly in weary triumph,And more than all in a dark wondermentOf what enchantment there was wanting in herTo keep this man so long out of her tollOf willing remnants and of eager cinders,Now scattered and forgotten save as namesTo make her smile. If she sat smiling now,It was not yet for contemplated havocOf this man’s loyalty to a lost dream Where she was nothing. She had made other menDream themselves dead for her, but not this man,Who sat now glowering with a captive scornBefore her, waiting grimly for a wordOf weariness or of anger or disdainTo set him free.
“You are not sound enough,My lord, for travel yet,” she said. “I know,For I have done more delving into lifeAnd death than you, and into this mid-regionBetween them, where you are, and where you sitSo cursed with loneliness and lethargyThat I could weep. Hard as this is for you,It might be worse. You will go on your way,While I sit knitting, withering and outworn,With never a man that looks at me, save you,So truthful as to tell me so.” She laughedAt him again, and he heard metal laughing,As he had heard it speaking, in her lowAnd stinging words.
“You are not withering yet,”He said; and his eyes ranged forgetfullyOver a studied feline slenderness Where frugal silk was not frugality.“I am too ill to see, in your account,More than how safe I am with you.” Isolt,With her scared violet eyes and blue-black hairFlew like a spirit driven from a starInto that room and for a moment stayedBefore him. In his eyes he could feel tearsOf passion, desperation, and remorse,Compounded with abysmal indignationAt a crude sullen hunger not deceived,Born of a sloth enforced and of a scornTransformed malignly to a slow surrender.His captor, when she saw them, came to himAnd with a mocking croon of mother-comfortFondled him like a snake with two warm armsAnd a warm mouth; and after long chagrinOf long imprisonment, and long prisoned hateFor her that in his hatred of himselfHe sought now like an animal, he madeNo more acknowledgment of her cajolingThan suddenly to rise without a wordAnd carry her off laughing in his arms,Himself in hers half strangled.
Gouvernail,As heretofore, found waiting him againThe same cold uncommunicating guards,Past whom there was no word. Another day,And still another and another dayFound them as mute in their obedienceAs things made there of wood. Tristram, within,Meanwhile achieved a sorry compositionOf loyalty and circumstance. “Tomorrow,”He said, “I must be out and on my way.”And Morgan only said, “Which way is that?”And so on for a fortnight, when at last,With anger in her eyes and injuriesOf his indifference envenomingThe venom in her passion and her pride,She let him go—though not without a laughThat followed him like steel piercing unseenHis flight away from her with Gouvernail.
“You leave me now,” she said, “but Fate has eyes.You are the only blind one who is here,As you are still to see. I said before,Britain is less than the whole firmament, And we may meet again. Until we meet,Farewell; and find somewhere a good physicianTo draw the poison of a lost IsoltOut of your sick young heart. Till he do so,You may as well be rearing you a tombThat else will hold you—presently. Farewell,Farewell, Sir Tristram, Prince of Lyonesse,The once redoubtable and undeceived,Who now in his defeat would put Fate’s eyes outNot yet, Sir Prince; and we may meet again.”She smiled; and a smile followed him long afterA sharp laugh was forgotten.
Gouvernail,Riding along with Tristram silentlyTill there was no glimpse left of Morgan’s prisonThrough the still trees behind them, sighed and said,“Where are we going, Tristram, and what next?”And through the kindness of his weary griefThere glimmered in his eyes a loyal smileUnseen by Tristram, though as well divinedAs if revealed.
“You are the last of men,And so the last of friends now, Gouvernail, For me to cleave to in extremitiesBeyond the malefactions of this world.You are apart and indispensable,Holding me out of madness until doom,Which I feel waiting now like death in the dark,Shall follow me and strike, unrecognized,For the last time. Away from that snake’s nestBehind me, it would be enough to knowIt is behind me, were it not for knowledgeThat in a serpent that is unsubduedAnd spurned, a special venom will be waitingIts time. And when the serpent is a woman,Or a thin brained and thinner blooded Andred,Infirm from birth with a malignant envy,One may not with one thrust annihilateThe slow disease of evil eating in themFor one that never willed them any evil.Twice have I heard in helpless recognitionA voice to bid me strike. I have not struck,And shall not . . . For a time now, Gouvernail,My memory sees a land where there is peace,And a good King whose world is in his kingdomAnd in his quaint possession of a child Whose innocence may teach me to be wiseTill I be strong again. I see a faceThat once was fond of me, and a white handHolding an agate that I left in it.I see a friendliness of old assuredIn Brittany. If anywhere there were peaceFor me, it might be there—or for some timeTill I’m awake and am a man again.”
“I was not saying all that to you, Tristram,”Gouvernail answered, looking at his reins,“But since you say it, I’ll not fatigue my tongueGainsaying it for no good. Time is a casketWherein our days are covered certaintiesThat we lift out of it, one after one,For what the day may tell. Your day of doom,Tristram, may like as not be one for youTo smile at, could you see it where it waits,Far down, I trust, with many a day betweenThat shall have gladness in it, and more lightThan this day has. When you are on the sea,And there are white waves everywhere to catchThe sunlight and dance with it and be glad The sea was made, you may be glad also.Youth sees too far to see how near it isTo seeing farther. You are too blind today,By dim necessity of circumstance,More than to guess. Whether you take your crownIn Lyonesse or not, you will be kingWherever you are. Many by chance are crownedAs kings that are born rather to be tinkers,Or farmers, or philosophers, or farriers,Or barbers, or almost anything under GodThan to be kings. Whether you will or not,You are a king, Tristram, for you are oneOf the time-sifted few that leave the world,When they are gone, not the same place it was.Mark what you leave.”
“There was a good man once,”Said Tristram, “who fed sunshine to the blindUntil the blind went mad, and the good manDied of his goodness, and died violently.If untoward pleasantries are your affection,Say this was in your casket and not mine.There’s a contentious kingdom in myself For me to rule before I shall rule others.If it is not too dark for me to fightIn there for my advantage and advancement,And if my armor holds itself togetherSo long as not to be disintegratedBefore it breaks and I am broken with it,There may be such a king as you foresee;And failing him, I shall not fail my friend,Who shall not be forgotten. Gouvernail,Be glad that you have no more darkness in you.”
They rode along in silence, GouvernailRetasting an abridgement undeserved,And undeserving of another venture,Or so his unofficial ardor warned him,Into a darkness and a namelessnessWherein his worldly and well-meaning eyesHad never sought a name for the unseen.