CHAPTER VII
The fog wrapped the river. The bridge showed now a few arches and nownone. Boats were moths in a moth dimness and silence. Saint Leofric’smount across the water could not be seen. The walls of the houses onthis side stood chill and grey, or faded away into a dream. The gardenbelow barely lived, a wistful, faded place, no colour even to dream ofcolour.
Morgen Fay hated the day. “Miserable! I want to go live in the sun!”
“Will you have your book? Will you have your tapestry frame?”
“No!”
The large woman, Ailsa, shrugged and went to Tony in the warm kitchen.They talked there. “Now she is nightingale or moon in the sky--and nowshe is lion-woman or panther-woman--and now she is just a slut that Icould whip--!”
Up in the oak room Morgen Fay lay face down among the cushions of thelong window seat. Ennui was in the room like the fog. It was in herveins, her mouth. “I am set face to a dead wall, and I shall be hereforever! Unless the wall is broken and my feet are let to move, I willsay that life is a naught, a nothing-wall restraining nothing fromnothing, a dead grin on a dead face!”
“Nothing--nothing--nothing!” ran through her head and sat in her heart.“Nothing--grey nothing--black nothing. I am come to that. I stick inthat. I go not up nor down, nor to nor fro. Nothing--nothing--nothing!Nothing that yet is wretched, being nothing!”
She lay with dark eyes hidden in bend of arm. “Oh,something--something--something come to me!”
She lay in the grey room in the world of grey fog. A pebble wrapped ina glove, thrown from without, struck the glass of the window above her.She knew that kind of sound, that kind of knock. “Ho, you within!” Atfirst she meant not to look, not to answer. It was all grey nothing--nosun out there to lift the cloud. Habit, old, dull and very strong, atlast haled her from her pillows and set her face against the pane. Shecould not see. She pressed the catch that opened the small square inthe larger square. Now the fog poured in, and the sound of the river.She made out the small boat below, one man standing in it.
He saw her face come out of the mist. Blue eyes looked into black eyes.“Ah, so doleful is it in this fog!” cried young Thomas Bettany.
“Aye, and aye again. I yawn with death up here!”
“So grey it is none will see and steal my boat fastened here. Foot hereand foot there, and so I could climb--were the window opened more wide!”
She opened it. He did as he had pictured and entered the oak room. “Ihave been,” she said, “in two minds whether to hang myself or drownmyself. I want no kisses. I like you because you have blue speedwelleyes and are truly gay. If you can sit and talk and make me who sitinside gay, do it! If you cannot--back to the river!”
“Your blue and red warm the grey cloud. Are you melancholy? Sometimes Iam so until I would give the world a buffet and depart.”
“You are nineteen and a young king and know naught about it!” saidMorgen Fay. She took her seat by the small fire on the hearth and hesat opposite. He had no amorous passion for her and she knew it. Onceshe would have set herself to making him find it. Now she did not care.She had not cared once this year. She felt no amorous movement towardhim, but she liked him. She was thirty-two. Now, sitting there, shecould have said “Son--”
He nursed his knee, looking now at the blue and red flames and now atMorgen Fay.
“To get back a gay heart why not go to Saint Leofric’s?”
“I don’t believe in miracles. If they are, they are for others, not forme.”
“Why don’t you believe?”
“I don’t know. I know a deal of Morgen Fay and there’s a deal I do notknow. But neither what I know nor what I do not know creeps and praysto a dead man’s bones. All that to me is a mockery! I laugh at it andagainst it. Some are healed? Doubtless! Many! But believed they so ofit, a rose in my garden, so they smelled it, kissed it, believed it wasrooted in Paradise, would heal them! They heal themselves. Believing!Believing! I would that I had it. So easy to cure one’s self! Oh, theself is the wonder that is so dark and is so bright, so strong and sofeeble!”
She looked at him sombrely, hunger in her face.
“If you said all that outside--”
“Aye, indeed, if I said it! Morgen Fay that has ’scaped sheet andcandle all these years might have them now, but for a different reason!I’ll not say it outside--nor inside on a different day. To-day I wouldtell the truth, for there is no sparkle in lying!”
She brooded over the fire. “What is the truth? Now I believe what Ihave said--and to-morrow I might go swimming toward a miracle! I haveswam so in the past--believed with the shoal there was food there. Butno! It shall not be again toward dead-white bone!”
He began, blue-eyed, young and keen, to talk of travel that he wantedso badly! He was talking as youth might talk to motherhood, who alwayslistened. Cathay and Ind by the western way! They hung over the fire,the fog came about the house; they were far, far, far away!
When it was growing dusk, before Ailsa brought the candles, he wentthrough the window and down as he had come to his boat,--and so offlike a moth.
If he had not left Morgen Fay gay of heart, yet listening and speaking,and never a caress between, liking this boy and travelling a bitwith him, her mood was less ashen, or began to glow amid its ashes.She bent herself over the fire, she put her locked hands over herforehead, she rocked herself; desire and mind went wandering together.“Forest--forest deep and still. Landless sea, salt and clean. Solitude,solitude--and out of it the Miracle rising--and Morgen Fay dead at itsfeet--but I safe forever, healed forever! But it will not come, myMiracle, it will not come, it will not come!”
The dark increased. Ailsa brought the candles.
The next eve brought Somerville,--alone, in mood of return but nototherwise in good mood. A man of many levels, something had crossedhim and he perched to-day upon one of the lower levels of himself.Morgen Fay’s mood to-night was soulless, hard and reckless. She was notnightingale, nor moon in the sky, nor lion-woman nor panther-woman; shewas nearer the slut that Ailsa would have under her fingers. She drankmuch wine with Somerville.
When he was at this ebb and scurf of himself he liked so to loosenher tongue, for she could then flay for him--skilfully as ever Apolloflayed Marsyas--that breadth of living, that cluster of folk or thatindividual that he chose to lead to her. Perhaps she knew them, orperhaps she took them and their acts from his lips. Either way, with avigour of disdain, a vigour of hate, of anger against an universe thatwas increasingly giving her now ennui and now whips of scorpions, shedrew from them and held aloft a skin of attributes and motives thatmade dreadful laughter for the onlookers. She and Somerville were theonlookers.
In these moods he was her demon and she was his. They sat cheek byjowl, in the lowest strata of themselves, drinking each the worstof the other, poisoning and poisoned. When they came to embraces,to a pitiful, animal revivification--thinking so to get light andsolace--that was the lesser harm.
Somerville brought into their talk Brother Richard Englefield. “Thereis a monk at Silver Cross. Watch for appearances and miracles therealso!”
“What can church say to us? Where’s honesty? Here, Rob, here!”
“He is a tall, brown-gold man that was a goldsmith once. He can stillmake you lovely things in silver and gold.”
“So he becomes cheating alchemist and all his gold is lead and brass!”
“Much like thine own!” said a loud voice within Morgen Fay. She struckat it, would not have it, poured to-night, being to-night a slut, muckand mire upon it.
“Let him cheat--and Silver Cross cheat, and Saint Leofric’s, and PriorHugh and Abbot Mark! I would have them cheat, bringing their inwardoutward! It is there. Let the horn blow for the toad to come forth!”
“I wish to see,” said Somerville, “the play they make! It will beplayers and masquers worth the fee! There will be Saint Willebrod, orwho else they can impress, and Brother Richard, and a new Somewhat orThat Which that works miracles--or an old That Whic
h working with youthcome again!”
“We are fallen on evil times! No miracles save those we work ourselves!And we are so clumsy!”
“Abbot Mark may be clumsy. I hold that the Prior of Westforest willmarshal the play.”
“And they are more safe than coiners in some forest cavern!”
“That, sweetheart, is because we are so hungry for miracles. See how webeg Saint Leofric for more! We are so lantern-jawed that we will takemarsh grain, so it be baked in a loaf!”
She laughed. “All gaunt with hunger--getting wolf-toothed. I, too, havewhined and will whine again, for a miracle!”
He poured her more wine. “It’s a wicked old world! The only way is togrin and shove it along.”
“Unless you stop it with a rope. If I were sure I _could_ stop it.”
“Drink your wine. Here’s to Brother Richard--dog-monk noseing out theunearthly!”
She drank. “Here’s to Prior Matthew the marshal! If it’s to be a goodplay, I would be a playgoer!”
“Here’s to the rotten time--the hungry people!”
“Here’s to the rotten time--the hungry people.” She drank, then setslowly down the cup and put her crossed arms upon the table and bowedher head upon them. She and Somerville were down, down, far down inthemselves.