Complete works of willia.., p.266
Complete Works of William Morris, page 266
Short it is that is left to tell. The Carline knew of a certainty that he had been smitten in felony and grievously hurt, and that he had been carried to an hermitage and there healed; therefore she waylaid him on a time and brought him to the house wherein they dwelt. And there, whether it were by her planning or by mere chance-hap may scarce be told, but such a thing befel that the wrath of the champion blazed out in him, so that for some few minutes he might scarce tell what was before him. And then it was all over, and they two were sealed for one another for what yet abided them on the earth.
Now this is my tale, and belike it has been somewhat overlong, and therefore it scarce needs that ye bid this damsel tell a tale for her part, which were indeed better told by her casting to earth her grey cloak and showing her body fairly dight. For, indeed, this damsel belongeth to one who is your kinsman and dear friend: and seemly will she think it that she show her body so dight that it shall lack no fairness before you.
Chapter LXV. Osberne and Elfhild Make Themselves Known to Their People
Therewith the Carline sat down, and there was great cheer and rumour in the hall, and folk wondered what was to come next; but it is not to be said but that they had an inkling of what had befallen. Then Elfhild arose and cast off her grey clothes, and was clad thereunder in the finest of fine gear of gold and of green, and surely, said everybody, that never was such beauty seen in hall. And for a while people held their breaths, as they that see a wonder which they fear may pass away. And then a great shout rent the hall, and there it was done. A tall man rose in his place, a grey cloak fell from him, and he was clad all in glittering armour, and there was none that did not know him for Osberne Wulfgrimsson, who has been called the Red Lad. And he said in a bold and free voice: “See, my masters and dear friends, if I have not kept tryst with you; for it is of a sooth five years well told since I departed from Wethermel with little hope in my heart. And now forsooth is no hope in my heart, for all the hope has budded and blossomed and fruited, and I am yours and ye are mine while the days last. And this is the woman that I have won; and O I would that it had been earlier, though God wot I laboured at it. And now I think ye will be good to her as ye will be good to me, and what tale shall there be except of peace and quiet in these far-away upland vales?”
[Unwritten Song]
So passed the hours into deep might at Wethermel, and folk went to sleep scarce trowing in the wonders that they had heard and seen. And there were few among them that did not long for the dawn and the daylight, that they might once again cast eyes upon Osberne and his beloved. And hard it were to say which of those twain was the loveliest. But surely about both of them there was then and always a sweet wisdom that never went beyond what was due and meet for the land they lived in or the people with whom they dwelt. So that all round them the folk grew better and not the worser.
Chapter LXVI. The Lip of the Sundering Flood
When it was the morning and the sun shone through the house at Wethermel, those two arose and took each other by the hand, and no word they spake together, but went straight to the Sundering Flood, and there they walked slowly and daintily along the very lip thereof; and the day was the crown of all midsummer days, and it seemed to Elfhild that never on the other side had the flowers looked so fair and beautiful. So they went on till they came to the Bight of the Cloven Knoll, and there they looked across a while and yet said nothing. And Elfhild looked curiously toward that cave wherein Osberne first espied her, and she said: “How would it be if there were another one there?” He laughed and said: “There is not another one.” But she said: “Dost thou remember that game I played with the shepherd’s pipe, how that the sheep came all bundling towards me?” “Dearly I remember it,” said Osberne. “Now,” she said, “I will tell thee a thing. I have got the said pipe in my bosom now. It were good game to have it forth and try whether it has lost its power.” He said: “Well, try it.” She said: “Be there sheep about?” And there were no sheep at no great distance.
And she drew forth the pipe and let her lips to it and played, and there came from it that very same sweet old tune that had joyed him so much long aforetime. But when they looked to see what would happen to the sheep, lo and behold they stirred not at all for the sweetness of the tune, nor made as if they heard it. So they laughed, albeit each of them, and Elfhild in especial, was a little grieved that the power had departed from the pipe. And they looked down towards the water, and Elfhild half thought to see a little brown man sitting at the door of the cave. But there was nothing; only it seemed to them both that there came up from the water a sound that said, Give it me back again. And Osberne said: “Didst thou hear that?” “Yea,” she said, “I thought I heard something. What shall we do?” Said he: “Why should he have his pipe back again?” She said: “Let us see what will happen if we cast it down to him.” “Good,” said Osberne, and he took the pipe, and as deftly as he might he cast it towards the mouth of the cave, but it fell a long way short.
But lo, as it was on the very point of striking the water it seemed that it was wafted up to the cave’s mouth, and it vanished away into the cave no slower than might have been looked for. And a faint voice came up from the water and said, I am pleased; good luck go with you.
So they sat down and pondered on these things a while, till at last Elfhild said: “Now will I tell thee a tale as in old days.” And he said: “That is good.” Then she began a tale which was sweet and pleasant, and little like to those terrible things that had happened to those two since they were sundered by the Flood. And it lasted long, and the afternoon was hot, and they were fain for coolness’ sake to creep into the shadow of certain bushes that grew a little off the lip of the Sundering Flood. There they rested them, and when the shadows began to lengthen, they arose and went back hand in hand to Wethermel as they had come.
Chapter LXVII. A Friend at Need
It was some three years after this that weaponed men came down into the Dale. It was told to Osberne, and he took his sword and went to meet them. He came across them as they fared slowly down the bent, looking weary and fordone. He looked at them, and he saw that there was nothing for it but that the chiefest of them, and there were but three, was the Knight of Longshaw. So he ran up to him, and cast his arms about him, and kissed him, and asked him what ailed. And the Knight said, and laughed withal: “That has befallen me which befals most men: I have been overcome, and I believe that my foes are hard on my heels.”
“Will they be a many?” said Osberne. “Not in this first stour,” said the Knight. “Well,” said Osberne, “I will go and look to it to get a few men together to show them out of the Dale.” So he turned hand in hand with the Knight of Longshaw, and cried out to Stephen the Eater to gather forth; and in an hour or so they had enough men and to spare. By that time the pursuers came glittering over the bent, so Osberne and his gathered themselves together and stood till the others came. And when they were within hail, Osberne asked: “What would ye here in arms? We are peaceable men.” Said the pursuers: “We have nought to do with you, but we would have the body of a felon and a traitor hight the Knight of Longshaw.”
Osberne laughed and said: “Here he stands beside me; come and take him!” And the foe were some three score, all a-horseback. So they fell on without more words; but they made nothing of it, and the Wethermelers kept them aloof with spear and bill. Albeit Osberne did not draw his sword, nor did the Knight of Longshaw.
Then the foemen held off a little, and they said: “Hark ye, ye up-countrymen, if ye do not give up this man, then will we burn your house to the threshold.”
“Yea,” said Osberne, “ye have all day long to do it in, make no delay therefore. Or did ye ever hear who I am?” And they said: “Nay, we know not.” Then he let his red cloak float over him and let his byrny show glittering, and he drew Boardcleaver and suddenly cried out, “The Red Lad! The Red Lad!” and all the others did in like wise. Then the foemen fled up the bent. And Osberne said: “Lightfoot men of Wethermel, here is a job for you: let not one of these men escape from out of the Dale.” So they fell to, and hard they worked at it, and so they wrought that they slew them every one.
Then Osberne went back to the Knight of Longshaw and said: “See, master, it is still a name to conjure with. And now what wilt thou do? Wilt thou gather men in the Dale here? We can find thee a ten score or thereabout of as good men as need be.”
“Nay,” said the Knight, “I will not have them, for meseems I am getting towards the end of my tether, and I will not carry away your good men and true from your wives and your children.” So therewith they went into the stead and were joyful together.
Chapter LXVIII. The Knight of Longshaw Gathereth Force
The Knight of Longshaw abode at Wethermel in much content, and much it pleased him to look upon the beauty of Elfhild and the fairness of the life that men lived in the Dale. At last he said: “Now I must shake off my sloth somewhat, and it will be a case of farewell.” “Will it?” said Osberne. “Yea,” said the Knight, “for I will to Eastcheaping, and there I will set me to gather men, and I look to it that, ere three months are over, I shall have a good host on foot.” “It is well,” said Osberne.
So in two days’ time the Knight went, with his two men that had fled into the Dale with him, to Eastcheaping, and Osberne rode with him. When they came to Eastcheaping the Knight said: “Now is the time for farewell.” “Nay, nay,” said Osberne, “there shall be no farewell this time at least; but I will help thee with the gathering of men, and when we have got an host I will be the leader thereof. This thou must not gainsay me.” Said the Knight: “But gainsay thee I will, for unless thou gettest thee back to thine own people I will break up my whole purpose.” “And why?” said Osberne. “Thou art blind not to see,” said the Knight. “I come and find thee here as happy as any man in the world, wedded to a fair wife, the lord of a stout and stalwarth people who love thee above all things. And I have that in me that tells me that if I carry thee away I carry thee away to death. For I have seen thee in a dream of the night and in a dream of the day living at Wethermel and dying on a field near the City of the Sundering Flood.”
Said Osberne: “And shall I choose dishonour then?”
“Nay,” he said, “where is the dishonour? Besides, take this for a gibe, that whereas time agone I could do but ill without thee, now I can do without thee well, for I have three or four fellows will come to my call as soon as they know that my banner is in the field again. Wherefore, I tell thee, thou must either be my unfriend, or get thee back home my friend and my lad.” So when Osberne saw it would no better be, he wept and bade farewell to the Knight of Longshaw, and went his ways back home. Six months hence he heard true tidings of the Knight, that he had gathered an host and fallen on his foes, and had fared nowhere save to thrive. And it is not said that he met the Knight of Longshaw face to face again in this life.
It is further to be told that once in every quarter Osberne went into that same dale wherein he first met Steelhead, and there he came to him, and they had converse together; and though Osberne changed the aspect of him from year to year, as for Steelhead he changed not at all, but was ever the same as when Osberne first saw him, and good love there was between those twain.
Now is there no more to say concerning the Sundering Flood and those that dwelt thereby.
THE NOVEL ON BLUE PAPER
This unfinished novel was begun in the early 1870’s. Set in the then present day, it is highly uncharacteristic of Morris’ work, adhering to utopian concerns and fantasy mediaevalist settings. It was eventually published in 1982, in an edition edited by Penelope Fitzgerald, who gave the novel its published title, after the blue foolscap paper on which the manuscript was written. The story involves a love triangle between two brothers and a young woman named Clara – a situation that echoed a similar love triangle in which Morris was embroiled whilst writing the fragment, between himself, his wife Jane and his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Cover of the first published edition, 1982
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE VILLAGE OF ORMSLADE
CHAPTER II. THE RECTORY
CHAPTER III. MRS RISLEY’S SECRET
CHAPTER IV. ELEANOR’S VISIT
CHAPTER V. THE TWO LADS
CHAPTER VI. IN THE GARDEN — OLD JACK’S STORY
CHAPTER VII. FATHER AND SON
CHAPTER VIII. UP THE STREAM
CHAPTER IX. THE ALOE BLOSSOMS
CHAPTER X. CLARA AND HER MOTHER
CHAPTER XI. HOW THE DAY ENDED
CHAPTER XII. CLARA’S LETTER
CHAPTER XIII. THE PLEASURE-PARTY: THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER XIV. THE PLEASURE-PARTY: THE END
CHAPTER XV. JOHN LEAVES HOME
Frontispiece of the first edition
Jane Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Morris’ wife and friend, whose affair inspired the events of this unfinished novel
CHAPTER I. THE VILLAGE OF ORMSLADE
Our story begins in a village not so very far from London, yet in a country out of the tracks of the busiest people, and at any rate, for whatsoever reason, with a remote and unchanging air about it, that put it beyond dullness, and made the commonplace people, who wore away their monotonous and thoughtless lives there seem to the dreamy wanderer through the streets as if they must deal with a different code of right and wrong, different ways of hope and fear and pleasure and pain than him.
It was an old village of middling size, with no squire’s house in it or near it, because a very great lord’s house some five miles off swallowed up all the land thereabout; the rectory, on the other hand, was rich, and the rector served for squire in this village of Ormslade, which stood nearly on the borders of rich grazing country and a strange open waste, sometimes wooded and sometimes bare, called Scolton Chase. Old as the village street was it looked still older, for, in that country of good building stone, people kept building decent houses with little mullioned windows a good hundred years later than in most parts of England, and the houses here were mostly built of this brown stone with slate roofs.
A queer little old red-brick house with stiff iron railings and two yards of garden along its front had a brass plate on the door and held the doctor; another red brick house, as small, and not lacking the railings and garden, but new, and with a blue slate roof, had a general shop below, and rooms where the curate lodged above; another, originally made of two of the ordinary houses knocked into one, had been taken possession of by a retired skipper, who had long spent his days in building rockwork about the garden, fowl-houses and statues like castles in wood and plaster, and an arbour with a dome to it. The other houses were all of one type, only differing being bigger or smaller, and in some of them having little gardens in front which most lacked, the little white-haired freckled children building their mud-pies right up against the brown stone walls of them; the village inn was not among the biggest; it stood back a little from the road, a big pollard elm in front of the door with a circular bench round its roots, and the sign thrust out from halfway up its bole, where one could still dimly see the two white harts and the bugle of the Scolton arms.
Near its end the long street was cut across by a road, the northern arm of which led up through rising ground to the Chase, the southern into the heart of the undulating hedged meadow land; just down this road lay the Rectory first, and then the church; the Rectory a handsome old stone house, with a garden whose long high wall ran alongside the road, and had a square turret-like pleasure arbour at the corner of it, a common fashion thereabouts. The church and church yard ended the village on that side: and the ground sloped quickly away from them into fields, heavily hedged as afore said. Looking from the crazy paling of the churchyard one might see the rich countryside, not very far indeed, for it soon swelled up into a hedged slope again, a patchwork at some times of the year of ploughed field and grass mead, but this June tide all green, the just cleared hayfield showing bright among the beans and corn.
Between the first slope and the church had been a battle once; the whole countryside had been much fought over in the parliamentary wars; and in the time when Oxford was Charles’ headquarters, a regiment of Royalist horse surprised a band of Roundhead levies marching towards Reading, and beat them into rout after a fierce skirmish; many men fell in the village street itself, and in the parish register was record of eighteen troopers buried on the north side of the church. Nearer the river again the partisans of the luckless Richard the Second had had one of their last scatterings, but the place of this was grown dim by this time; on the north side of the village history went back with a great leap, for on the borders of the Chase were three barrows, and the farmhouse they stood by had kept at any rate the popular idea of what they were, in the name of Danesho Hall.
