Tales from Tennyson Part 9

"He was the man that was wanted. They dragged him to the king's court by force, he didn't want to go. There he taught the king how to charm the queen so that no one could see her again, and she could see no one except the king as he pa.s.sed about the palace. She lay as if quite dead and lost to life. But when the king offered the magician his league of golden mines, the province with a hundred miles of sea coast, the palace and the princess, the old man turned away, went back to his wilderness and lived on gra.s.s and vanished away. But his book came down to me."

"You have the book!" cried Vivian smiling saucily. "The charm is written in it. Good, take my advice and let me know the secret at once, for if you should hide it away like a puzzle in a chest, if you should put chest upon chest, and lock and padlock each chest thirty times and bury them all away under some vast mound like the heaps of soldiers on the battle-field, still I should hit upon some way of digging it out, of picking it, of opening it and reading the charm. And _then_ if I tried it on you who would blame me?"

"You read the book, my pretty Vivien?" cried Merlin. "Well, it's only twenty pages long, but such pages! Every page has a square of text that looks like a blot, the letters no longer than fleas' legs written in a language that has long gone by, and all the borders and margins scribbled, crossed and crammed with notes. You read that book! No one, not even I can read the text, and no one besides me can make out the notes on the margins. I found the charm in the margin. Oh, it is simple enough. Any child might work it and then not be able to undo it. Don't ask me again for it, because even although you would love me too much to try it on me, still you might try it on some of the knights of the Round Table."

"O, you are crueller than any man ever told of in a story, or sung about in song!" cried Vivien. She clapped her hands together and wailed out a shriek. "I'm stabbed to the heart! I only wished that prove to you that were wholly mine, that you loved me and now I'm killed with a word.

There's nothing left for me to do except crawl into some hole or cave, and if the wolves won't tear me to pieces, just to weep my life away, killed with unutterable unkindness!"

She paused, turned away, hung her head while the hair uncoiled itself.

Then she wept afresh.

The dark wood grew darker with a storm coming over the sky.

Merlin sat thinking quietly and half believed that she was true.

"Come out of the storm," he called over to her, "come here into the hollow old oak tree."

Then since she didn't answer, he tried three times to calm her but quite in vain. At last, however, she let herself be conquered, came back to her old perch, and nestled there, half falling from his knees. Gentle Merlin saw the slow tears still standing in her eyes and threw his arms kindly about her. But Vivien unlinked herself at once, rose with her arms crossed upon her bosom and fled away.

"No more love between us two," she cried, "for you do not trust me. Oh, it would have been better if I had died three times over than to have asked you once! Farewell, think gently of me and I will go. But before I leave you let me swear once more that if I've been planning against you in all this, may the dark heavens send one great flash from out the sky to burn me to a cinder!"

Just as she ended a bolt of lightning darted across the sky, and sliced the giant oak tree into a thousand splinters and spikes.

"Oh, Merlin, save me! save me!" cried Vivien, terrified lest the heavens had heard her oath and were going to kill her. And she flew back to his arms. She called him her dear protector, her lord and liege, her seer, her bard, her silver star of evening, her G.o.d, her Merlin, the one pa.s.sionate love of her life, and hugged him close.

All the time overhead the tempest bellowed, the branches snapped above them in the rushing rain. Her glittering eyes and neck seemed to come and go before Merlin's eyes with the lightning. At last the storm had spent its pa.s.sion, the woodland was all in peace again, and Merlin, overtalked and overworn had told all of the charm and had fallen asleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE HOLLOW OF THE OLD OAK TREE LEFT HIM LYING DEAD.]

Then in a moment Vivien worked the charm with woven footsteps and waving arms, and in the hollow of the old oak tree left him lying dead to all life, use and fame and name.

"I have made his glory mine! O fool!" she shrieked, and she sprang down through the great forest, the thicket closed about her behind her and all the woods echoed, "Fool!"

BALIN AND BALAN.

King Pellam owed Arthur some tribute money so Arthur told three of his knights to go see about it and collect it for him.

"Very well," said one of the knights, "but listen, on the way to King Pellam's country, near Camelot, there are two strange knights sitting beside a fountain. They challenge and overthrow every knight that pa.s.ses. Shall I stop to fight them as we go by and send them back to you?"

Arthur laughed, "No, don't stop for anything; let them wait until they can find some one stronger themselves."

With that the three men left. But after they had gone Arthur, who loved a good fight himself, started away early one morning for the fountain side of Camelot. On its right hand he saw the knight Balin sitting under an alder tree, with his horse beside him, and on the left hand under a poplar tree with his horse at his side sat the knight Balan.

"Fair sirs," cried Arthur, "why are you sitting here?"

"For the sake of glory," they answered. "We're stronger than all Arthur's court. We've proved that because we easily overthrow every knight that comes by here."

"Well, I'm of Arthur's court, too," replied the king, "although I've never done so much in jousts as in real wars. But see whether you can overthrow me so easily too."

So the two brothers came out boldly and fought with Arthur, but he struck them both lightly down, then softly came away and n.o.body knew anything about it.

But that evening while Balin and Balan sat very meekly by the bubbling water a spangled messenger came riding by and cried out to them: "Sirs, you are sent for by the King."

So they followed the man back to the court. "Tell me your names,"

demanded Arthur, "and why do you sit there by the fountain?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO STRANGE KNIGHTS.]

"My name is Balin," answered one of the men, "and my brother's name is Balan. Three years ago I struck down one of your slaves whom I heard had spoken ill of me, and you sent me away for a three years' exile. Then I thought that if we would sit by the well and would overcome every knight who pa.s.sed by you would be a more willing to take me back. But today some man of yours came along and conquered us both. What do you wish with me?"

"Be wiser for falling," Arthur said. "Your chair is in the hall vacant.

Take it again and be my knight once more."

So Balin went back into the old hall of the Knights of the Round Table, and they all clashed their cups together drinking his welcome, and sang until all of Arthur's banners of war hanging overhead began to stir as they always did on the battlefield.

Meanwhile the men who had gone to collect the taxes from King Pellam returned.

"Sir King," they cried to Arthur, "We scarcely could see Pellam for the gloom in his hall. That man who used to be one of your roughest and most riotous enemies is now living like a monk in his castle and has all sorts of holy things about him, and says he has given up all matters of the world. He wouldn't even talk about the tribute money and told us that his heir Sir Garlon, attended to his business for him, so we went to Garlon and after a struggle we got it. Then we came away, but as we pa.s.sed through the deep woods we found one of your knights lying dead, killed by a spear. After we had buried him, we talked with an old woodman who told us that there's a demon of the woods who had probably slain the knight. This demon, he said, was once a man who lived all alone and learned black magic. He hated people so much that when he died he became a fiend. The woodman showed us the cave where he has seen the demon go in and out and where he lives. We saw the print of a horse's hoof, but no more."

"Foully and villainously slain!" cried Arthur thinking of his poor killed knight in the woods. "Who will go hunt this demon of the woods for me?"

"I!" exclaimed Balan, ready to dart instantly away, but first he embraced Balin, saying, "Good brother, hear; don't let your angry pa.s.sions conquer you, fight them away. Remember how these knights of the Round Table welcomed you back. Be a loving brother with them and don't imagine that there is hatred among them here any more than there is in heaven itself."

When bad Balan left, Balin set himself to learn how to curb his wildness and become a courteous and manly knight. He always hovered about Lancelot, the pattern knight of all the court, to see how he did, and when he noticed Lancelot's sweet smiles and his little pleasant words that gladdened every knight or churl or child that he pa.s.sed, Balin sighed like some lame boy who longed to scale a mountain top and could scarcely limp up one hundred feet from the base.

"It's Lancelot's worship of the queen that helps to make him gentle,"

said he to himself. "If I want to be gentle I must serve and worship lovely Queen Guinevere too. Suppose I ask the King to let me have some token of hers on my shield instead of these pictures of wild beasts with big teeth and grins. Then whenever I see it I'll forget my wild heats and violences."

"What would you like to bear on your shield?" asked the king when Balin spoke to him about his wish.

"The queen's own crown-royal," replied Balin.

Then the queen smiled and turned to Arthur. "The crown is only the shadow of the king," she said, "and this crown is the shadow of that shadow. But let him have it if it will help him out of his violences."

"It's no shadow to me, my queen," cried Balan, "no shadow to me, king.

It's a light for me."

So Balin was given the crown to bear on his shield and whenever he looked at it, it seemed to make him feel gentle and patient.

But one morning as he heard Lancelot and the queen talking together on the white walk of lilies that led to Queen Guinevere's bower, all his old pa.s.sions seemed to come back and filled him and he darted madly away on his horse, not stopping until he had pa.s.sed the fount where he had sat with his brother Balan and had dived into the skyless woods beyond.

There the gray-headed woodman was hewing away wearily at a branch of a tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BALIN WAS GIVEN THE CROWN TO WEAR ON HIS SHIELD.]