The Fortunes of Garin by Mary Johnston (romantic novels in english .txt) đź“–
- Author: Mary Johnston
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From the church behind him came a drift of music and chanting. A woman, mounting the steps, caught his words and paused to look at him. She was between youth and age, with a pale, ecstatic[130] face. “Now all the violets bloom,” she said, “and the leaves shiver on the trees as the flowers come up between them! But earthly spring, fair brother, is but a fourth part of Time, and in Eternity a grain, a wind-blown petal! Choose thou Religion and find her the true love!”
She passed into the church. Garin, rising from the steps, looked about him. While he sat there the space around had become peopled. Many folk were entering the doors. As he looked, there turned a corner eight or ten men walking in procession, behind and about them a throng. All mounted the steps, pressing toward the entrance. The most had pale faces of enthusiasm. Of the crowd some were weeping, some uttering exclamations of praise and ecstasy. Garin touched a bystander on the sleeve. “What takes place?”
“Do you not see the crosses?”
“I could not for the crowd,” said Garin. “I can now. They are going to the land over sea?”
“Three ships with their companies sail from the nearest port. All the churches are singing mass and sewing crosses on those who will take them.”
“But there is no great and general going preached to-day,” said Garin. “There has not been since Saint Bernard’s time.”
“They say it will soon be preached again,” answered his informant. “Holy church must find a way to set off heresy that is creeping in!—These are ships sailing with help for King Baldwin of[131] Jerusalem. The Pope has granted a great Indulgence, and many from these parts are going that they may wipe out their sins.”
The informant moved toward the doors. Garin thought of entering and hearing mass and seeing the crosses sewed on. But then he thought that it would be wiser to keep his road. He waited until most of the people had gone into the church, then found his way to the westward-giving town gate and passed out into the country. In Foulque’s purse he had still enough to purchase—not another Paladin, as he recognized with a sigh, but yet some horse not wholly unworthy. But this town, he had been told, had no good horse-market. Such and such a place, some miles away, was better. So he walked in his russet and blue and suited so the russet, sunshiny country and the profound blue arch of the sky.
Upon a lonely stretch of the road he came to a wayside cross, with a gaunt figure carved upon it. A gaunt figure, too, sat beside the cross, but rose as he approached and tinkled a small bell that it carried. As he lifted his mantle and went by with averted face so that he might not breathe the air that flowed between, it croaked out a demand for alms. It came so foully across Garin’s dream that he shook his head and hurried by. But when an eighth of a mile was between him and the leper he stood still, his eyes upon the ground. At last, drawing out Foulque’s purse, he took from it a coin and[132] going back dropped it into the leper’s cup. “In Love’s name!” he said.
The leper widened his lips. “What is Love’s name?” he asked. “If I had its name, I might make it do something!”
Garin left him by the wayside cross, a terrible, unhelped person. He darkened his mood for him, or the stress and strain and elevation of the past week, flagging, left him suddenly in some dead backwater or black pool of being. He walked on, putting the miles behind him, but with no springing step and with a blank gaze. Light and colour seemed to withdraw from the day and the landscape. The cross-taking in the town behind him and the leper by the roadside conjoined with many another fact, attitude, and tendency of his world. It could show itself a gusty world of passion and energy, and also a world of asceticisms, humilities and glooms, of winter days struggling with spring days, of an inward fall toward lessening and annihilation. Here was an hour impetuous and crescive, and here was its successor passive, resigned and fading, and one man or woman might experience both. Garin had been aloft; now he walked in a vale indeed, and could have laid himself upon its ashy soil and wept.
Out of that mood he passed into one less drear. But he was still sad, and the whole huge world came into correspondence. Lepers and outcast persons, prisoners, and slaves, the poor and hopeless, the[133] lovers parted, the condemned for sin—Garin plodded on, his eyes upon the earth.
A sound of distant bells aroused him. He lifted his head and looked to see whence it came. At the base of an olive-planted hill appeared a monastery, not large, but a simple-seeming, antique place. It had a church, small too, with a bell-tower. The country hereabouts was rich with woods and streams and purple crags, in the distance a curtain of great mountains. Before him, two miles or so away, Garin saw a castle crowning a cliff rising from a narrow valley. It, neither, was large—though larger than Raimbaut’s castle.... The bells were ringing sweetly, the light bathed the little vale and washed the crag and the castle walls. Garin’s sadness fell, in part, from him. What stayed only gave depth and charm to all that in that moment met his senses. In him phantasy turned quickly, acted quickly. “I like all this,” it said in effect. “And I tell myself that in the baron who dwells in that castle I shall find a lord who will knight me!”
He resolved to go to the castle. He walked quickly now, with a determined, light step. A spur of the road led off to the church where the bells were yet ringing. Between the town he had quitted and this spot he had met few people upon the way. Nor were there any here, where the two roads joined. It lay a wide, clean, sunny space. But as he continued upon the highway the emptiness of the world began to change. Folk appeared, singly or in groups,[134] and all were going toward the ringing bells. Passing an old man, he asked, “What is the mass for?” and was answered, “They are going over sea.”
A young man, an artisan with a bag of tools in his hand, approached. Garin stopped him. “What lord lives in yonder castle?”
“Sir Eudes de Panemonde,” said the artisan. “He has taken the cross and is going to the land over sea.”
Garin stood still, staring at him, then drew his breath, and with a jerk of the head went on by. “The land over sea!” said Garin. “The land over sea!”
There was a calvary built by the roadside. Men and women knelt before it, then rising, hurried on toward the church. Close by, on a great stone, sat a cowled monk, stationed there, it would seem, to give information or counsel. Garin, coming up, gave and received salutation.
“Are you for the cross, fair son?” demanded the monk. “You would give a lusty blow to the infidel! Take it, and win pardon for even the sins you dream of!”
“Why, brother,” asked Garin, “does Sir Eudes de Panemonde go?”
“Long years ago,” answered the monk, “when he was a young man, Sir Eudes committed a great sin. He has done penance, as this monastery knows, that receives his gifts! But now he would further cleanse his soul.”
[135]
“He is not then young nor of middle-age?”
“He is threescore,” said the monk.
Another claimed his attention. Garin moved away, kept on upon the road. None now was going his way, all were coming from the direction of the castle. There must be a little bourg beyond, hidden by some arm of earth, purple-sleeved. He thought that he saw in the distance, descending a hill, a procession. Under a lime tree by the road sat an old cripple decently clad, and with a grandson and granddaughter to care for him. Garin again stayed his steps. “What manner of knight, father, is Sir Eudes de Panemonde?”
The light being strong, the cripple looked from under his hand at the questioner. “Such a knight,” he said, in an old man-at-arms voice, “as a blue-and-tawny young sir-on-foot might be happy to hold stirrup for!”
“I mean,” said Garin, “is he noble of heart?”
But the old man was straining his eyes castle-ward. The grandson spoke. “He is a good lord—Sir Eudes! Sir Aimar may be a better yet.”
The procession was seen more plainly. “They are coming, grandfather!” cried the girl. “Sir Eudes and Sir Aimar will be in front, and the men they take with them. Then the people from the castle and Panemonde following—”
“Yea, yea!” said the old cripple. “I have seen before to-day folk go over seas to save the Holy Sepulchre and spare themselves hell pains! They[136] mean to come back—they mean to come back. But a-many never come, and we hear no tales of what they did.”
The grandson took the word. “Jean the Smith says that from the castle Sir Eudes walks barefoot and in his shirt to the church. That’s because of his old sin! Then, when all that go have heard mass and have communed, he will dress and arm himself within the monastery, all needful things having been sent there, and his horse as well. Then all that go will journey on to the port.”
Garin spoke to the girl. “Who is Sir Aimar?”
“He is Sir Eudes’s son.” She turned upon him a lighted face. “He is a brave and beautiful knight!”
“Is he going to the land over sea?”
“Yes.”
A hundred and more people were coming toward the lime tree, the calvary beyond it, the church and monastery beyond the calvary. Dust rose from the road and that and the distance obscured detail. There seemed to be horsemen, but many on foot. All the people strung along the road now turned their heads that way. There ran a murmur of voices. But Garin stood in silence beneath the lime tree, from which were falling pale yellow leaves. He stood in a waking dream. Instead of Languedoc he saw Palestine—a Palestine of the imagination. He had listened to palmers’ tales, to descriptions given by preaching monks. Once a knight-templar had stayed two days with Raimbaut the Six-fingered,[137] and the castle had hearkened, open-mouthed. So Garin had material. He saw a strange, fair land, and the Christian kingdoms and counties planted there; saw them as they were not or rarely were, or only might be; saw them dipped in glamour, saw them as a poet would, as that Prince Rudel did who took ship and went to find the Lady of Tripoli—and went to find the Lady of Tripoli....
The procession from the castle and the village beyond coming nearer, its component parts might clearly be discerned. In front walked two figures, and now it could be seen that they were both in white.
“Ah, ah!” cried the girl beside the old man; and there were tears in her voice. “Sir Aimar that did not do the sin, goes like Sir Eudes—”
The cripple would be lifted to his feet and held so. Grandson and daughter put hands beneath his arms and raised him. “So—so!” he said querulously. “And why shouldn’t the son go like a penitent if the father does? That’s only respect! But the young don’t respect us any longer—”
The procession came close. There rode twenty horsemen, of whom three or four wore knights’ spurs, and the others were mounted men-at-arms and esquires. All wore, stitched upon the mantle, or the sleeve, or the breast of the tunic, crosses of white cloth. Behind these men came others, mounted, but without crosses or the appearance of travellers. They seemed neighbours to the lord of Panemonde, men of[138] feudal rank, kinsmen and allies. Several might hold their land from him. There might be present his bailiff and also the knight or baron who had promised to care for Panemonde as though it were his own fief. In the rear of the train came the foot-people, castle retainers and servants, villagers, peasants, men, women and children, following their lord from Panemonde through the first stage of his travel over sea. Throughout the moving assemblage now there was solemn silence and now bursts of pious ejaculation, utterances of enthusiasm, adjurations to God, the Virgin and the Saints. Or, more poignant yet, there were raised chants of pilgrimage. When this was done the people along the roadside joined their voices. Moreover there were men and women who wept, and there were those who fell into ecstasy. Of all things in the world, in this age, emotion
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