| GAWAINE, aware again of Lancelot | |
| In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; | |
| Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms | |
| And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— | |
| Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories | 5 |
| Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? | |
| Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, | |
| And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light | |
| Between the narrowing lids at which he gazed. | |
| “And who of us are they that name their friends?” | 10 |
| Lancelot said. “They live that have not any. | |
| Why do they live, Gawaine? Ask why, and answer.” | |
| |
| Two men of an elected eminence, | |
| They stood for a time silent. Then Gawaine, | |
| Acknowledging the ghost of what was gone, | 15 |
| Put out his hand: “Rather, I say, why ask? | |
| If I be not the friend of Lancelot, | |
| May I be nailed alive along the ground | |
| And emmets eat me dead. If I be not | |
| The friend of Lancelot, may I be fried | 20 |
| With other liars in the pans of hell. | |
| What item otherwise of immolation | |
| Your Darkness may invent, be it mine to endure | |
| And yours to gloat on. For the time between, | |
| Consider this thing you see that is my hand. | 25 |
| If once, it has been yours a thousand times; | |
| Why not again? Gawaine has never lied | |
| To Lancelot; and this, of all wrong days— | |
| This day before the day when you go south | |
| To God knows what accomplishment of exile— | 30 |
| Were surely an ill day for lies to find | |
| An issue or a cause or an occasion. | |
| King Ban your father and King Lot my father, | |
| Were they alive, would shake their heads in sorrow | |
| To see us as we are, and I shake mine | 35 |
| In wonder. Will you take my hand, or no? | |
| Strong as I am, I do not hold it out | |
| For ever and on air. You see—my hand.” | |
| Lancelot gave his hand there to Gawaine, | |
| Who took it, held it, and then let it go, | 40 |
| Chagrined with its indifference. | |
| “Yes, Gawaine, | |
| I go tomorrow, and I wish you well; | |
| You and your brothers, Gareth, Gaheris,— | |
| And Agravaine; yes, even Agravaine, | 45 |
| Whose tongue has told all Camelot and all Britain | |
| More lies than yet have hatched of Modred’s envy. | |
| You say that you have never lied to me, | |
| And I believe it so. Let it be so. | |
| For now and always. Gawaine, I wish you well. | 50 |
| Tomorrow I go south, as Merlin went, | |
| But not for Merlin’s end. I go, Gawaine, | |
| And leave you to your ways. There are ways left.” | |
| “There are three ways I know, three famous ways, | |
| And all in Holy Writ,” Gawaine said, smiling: | 55 |
| “The snake’s way and the eagle’s way are two, | |
| And then we have a man’s way with a maid— | |
| Or with a woman who is not a maid. | |
| Your late way is to send all women scudding, | |
| To the last flash of the last cramoisy, | 60 |
| While you go south to find the fires of God. | |
| Since we came back again to Camelot | |
| From our immortal Quest—I came back first— | |
| No man has known you for the man you were | |
| Before you saw whatever ’t was you saw, | 65 |
| To make so little of kings and queens and friends | |
| Thereafter. Modred? Agravaine? My brothers? | |
| And what if they be brothers? What are brothers, | |
| If they be not our friends, your friends and mine? | |
| You turn away, and my words are no mark | 70 |
| On you affection or your memory? | |
| So be it then, if so it is to be. | |
| God save you, Lancelot; for by Saint Stephen, | |
| You are no more than man to save yourself.” | |
| |
| “Gawaine, I do not say that you are wrong, | 75 |
| Or that you are ill-seasoned in your lightness; | |
| You say that all you know is what you saw, | |
| And on your own averment you saw nothing. | |
| Your spoken word, Gawaine, I have not weighed | |
| In those unhappy scales of inference | 80 |
| That have no beam but one made out of hates | |
| And fears, and venomous conjecturings; | |
| Your tongue is not the sword that urges me | |
| Now out of Camelot. Two other swords | |
| There are that are awake, and in their scabbards | 85 |
| Are parching for the blood of Lancelot. | |
| Yet I go not away for fear of them, | |
| But for a sharper care. You say the truth, | |
| But not when you contend the fires of God | |
| Are my one fear,—for there is one fear more. | 90 |
| Therefore I go. Gawaine, I wish you well.” | |
| |
| “Well-wishing in a way is well enough; | |
| So, in a way, is caution; so, in a way, | |
| Are leeches, neatherds, and astrologers. | |
| Lancelot, listen. Sit you down and listen: | 95 |
| You talk of swords and fears and banishment. | |
| Two swords, you say; Modred and Agravaine, | |
| You mean. Had you meant Gaheris and Gareth, | |
| Or willed an evil on them, I should welcome | |
| And hasten your farewell. But Agravaine | 100 |
| Hears little what I say; his ears are Modred’s. | |
| The King is Modred’s father, and the Queen | |
| A prepossession of Modred’s lunacy. | |
| So much for my two brothers whom you fear, | |
| Not fearing for yourself. I say to you, | 105 |
| Fear not for anything—and so be wise | |
| And amiable again as heretofore; | |
| Let Modred have his humor, and Agravaine | |
| His tongue. The two of them have done their worst, | |
| And having done their worst, what have they done? | 110 |
| A whisper now and then, a chirrup or so | |
| In corners,—and what else? Ask what, and answer.” | |
| |
| Still with a frown that had no faith in it, | |
| Lancelot, pitying Gawaine’s lost endeavour | |
| To make an evil jest of evidence, | 115 |
| Sat fronting him with a remote forbearance— | |
| Whether for Gawaine blind or Gawaine false, | |
| Or both, or neither, he could not say yet, | |
| If ever; and to himself he said no more | |
| Than he said now aloud: “What else, Gawaine? | 120 |
| What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say; | |
| Destruction, dissolution, desolation, | |
| I say,—should I compound with jeopardy now. | |
| For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine: | |
| The way that we have gone so long together | 125 |
| Has underneath our feet, without our will, | |
| Become a twofold faring. Yours, I trust, | |
| May lead you always on, as it has led you, | |
| To praise and to much joy. Mine, I believe, | |
| Leads off to battles that are not yet fought, | 130 |
| And to the Light that once had blinded me. | |
| When I came back from seeing what I saw, | |
| I saw no place for me in Camelot. | |
| There is no place for me in Camelot. | |
| There is no place for me save where the Light | 135 |
| May lead me; and to that place I shall go. | |
| Meanwhile I lay upon your soul no load | |
| Of counsel or of empty admonition; | |
| Only I ask of you, should strife arise | |
| In Camelot, to remember, if you may, | 140 |
| That you’ve an ardor that outruns your reason, | |
| Also a glamour that outshines your guile; | |
| And you are a strange hater. I know that; | |
| And I’m in fortune that you hate not me. | |
| Yet while we have our sins to dream about, | 145 |
| Time has done worse for time than in our making; | |
| Albeit there may be sundry falterings | |
| And falls against us in the Book of Man.” | |
| |
| “Praise Adam, you are mellowing at last! | |
| I’ve always liked this world, and would so still; | 150 |
| And if it is your new Light leads you on | |
| To such an admirable gait, for God’s sake, | |
| Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot; | |
| Follow it as you never followed glory. | |
| Once I believed that I was on the way | 155 |
| That you call yours, but I came home again | |
| To Camelot—and Camelot was right, | |
| For the world knows its own that knows not you; | |
| You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing | |
| The carnal feast of life. You mow down men | 160 |
| Like elder-stems, and you leave women sighing | |
| For one more sight of you; but they do wrong. | |
| You are a man of mist, and have no shadow. | |
| God save you, Lancelot. If I laugh at you, | |
| I laugh in envy and in admiration.” | 165 |
| |
| The joyless evanescence of a smile, | |
| Discovered on the face of Lancelot | |
| By Gawaine’s unrelenting vigilance, | |
| Wavered, and with a sullen change went out; | |
| And then there was the music of a woman | 170 |
| Laughing behind them, and a woman spoke: | |
| “Gawaine, you said ‘God save you, Lancelot.’ | |
| Why should He save him any more to-day | |
| Than on another day? What has he done, | |
| Gawaine, that God should save him?” Guinevere, | 175 |
| With many questions in her dark blue eyes | |
| And one gay jewel in her golden hair, | |
| Had come upon the two of them unseen, | |
| Till now she was a russet apparition | |
| At which the two arose—one with a dash | 180 |
| Of easy leisure in his courtliness, | |
| One with a stately calm that might have pleased | |
| The Queen of a strange land indifferently. | |
| The firm incisive languor of her speech, | |
| Heard once, was heard through battles: “Lancelot, | 185 |
| What have you done to-day that God should save you? | |
| What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save him? | |
| I grieve that you two pinks of chivalry | |
| Should be so near me in my desolation, | |
| And I, poor soul alone, know nothing of it. | 190 |
| What has he done, Gawaine?” | |
| |
| With all her poise, | |
| To Gawaine’s undeceived urbanity | |
| She was less queen than woman for the nonce, | |
| And in her eyes there was a flickering | 195 |
| Of a still fear that would not be veiled wholly | |
| With any mask of mannered nonchalance. | |
| “What has he done? Madam, attend your nephew; | |
| And learn from him, in your incertitude, | |
| That this inordinate man Lancelot, | 200 |
| This engine of renown, this hewer down daily | |
| Of potent men by scores in our late warfare, | |
| Has now inside his head a foreign fever | |
| That urges him away to the last edge | |
| Of everything, there to efface himself | 205 |
| In ecstasy, and so be done with us. | |
| Hereafter, peradventure certain birds | |
| Will perch in meditation on his bones, | |
| Quite as if they were some poor sailor’s bones, | |
| Or felon’s jettisoned, or fisherman’s, | 210 |
| Or fowler’s bones, or Mark of Cornwall’s bones. | |
| In fine, this flower of men that was our comrade | |
| Shall be for us no more, from this day on, | |
| Than a much remembered Frenchman far away. | |
| Magnanimously I leave you now to prize | 215 |
| Your final sight of him; and leaving you, | |
| I leave the sun to shine for him alone, | |
| Whiles I grope on to gloom. Madam, farewell; | |
| And you, contrarious Lancelot, farewell.” | |
