The Knights of the Round Table

"In the morning Lancelot told the abbot of his dream, and the abbot said that it would be best for him to take his fellows with him and go to Almesbury, as he had been told to do. So they all set out, and when they came to the abbey at Almesbury the nuns knew who they were and why they had come, without being told. For they said: 'Our abbess died not an hour ago, and she told us that after she was dead the monk who used to be Sir Lancelot of the Lake would come for her and would bury her at Glastonbury, beside the King. She had been told of it in a dream.'

"So Lancelot and his fellows took the body of the Queen back with them to Glastonbury. There they made another grave before the altar in the chapel, beside the grave of King Arthur, and buried Queen Guinevere in it.

"And after this was done Lancelot would scarcely leave that chapel. He was there for nearly all of every day and much of every night, kneeling over the graves of the King and the Queen and praying. He would eat scarcely anything and he slept but little. And so he grew thin and pale and weak. The abbot and his friends could not comfort him or make him eat, and at last he told them that he should live only a little longer. 'When I am dead,' he said, 'take me and bury me in the chapel of my own old castle of Joyous Gard. I would far rather lie here in your chapel, near my King and my Queen, but years ago I made a vow that I would be buried in Joyous Gard, and I must keep that vow, so take me there.'

"That night the abbot awoke some of the monks by laughing aloud in his sleep. They went to the abbot's bed and he awoke and said: 'I have had the most beautiful dream that I have ever had in my life.'

"'What was it?' said Bors.

"'I dreamed,' the abbot said, 'that I saw Lancelot in the midst of a great company of angels. More angels there were than I ever saw of men in an army. Some of them lifted Lancelot up and they all rose to Heaven. I could see Lancelot's face as they went, and it was full of peace and gladness. They came near the gates of Heaven and the gates were opened for them and they all passed in. And as they passed I could see the great light that shone out and I could hear voices singing, and the gates were closed and then I awoke.'

"Then they all went to Lancelot's bed. He did not awake when they came to him, as the abbot had done. He lay still and his face was full of peace and gladness and he was dead.

"They took him the next day, all his friends and the abbot with them, and they journeyed slowly till they came to Joyous Gard. There they buried him and then they journeyed slowly back again to Glastonbury. They did not talk much as they went, but now and then they spoke a little, sadly, as people will at such times, of the older and happier days. To Bors and to some of the others it seemed only a little while since a hundred and fifty knights sat at the Round Table in the hall at Camelot. Here were some of the knights of the Round Table still, but the glory of it had passed away with the King and Galahad and Gawain and Lancelot."

CHAPTER XIX

"REXQUE FUTURUS"

We were at sea on our way home. We had left Southampton, where Arthur embarked when he went to fight the Emperor of Rome, and all day we had made our swift way west through the British Channel. When we came up on deck after dinner we had just passed the Scilly Islands. Dark and rough and hard they stood up out of the sea behind us, and a pale mist was just beginning to wrap them around and hide them a little from sight. Before us all the air was clear. The sun was just setting and was filling the sky with a dozen lovely hues of rose and violet and turning the water into tossing and tumbling gold.

"See," I said, "there are the Scilly Islands. They are all that is left of that lost land of Lyonnesse, Tristram's country, that used to reach from here back to the Land's End. The rest of it is sunk deep down under the water. This is all of Lyonnesse that we can ever see."

Helen did not seem to care very greatly even for this. She was thinking of the last of our stories. "Was King Arthur really buried," she said, "there in the Abbey of Glastonbury?"

"It is not easy to answer that," I said. "It seems to me that I have read enough books about King Arthur to fill this ship, yet I never could see that the writers of them had settled among themselves whether he was buried there or not. If we care to believe that he was, I think we may as well believe it."

"But do you believe it?"

"Yes, I believe it."

"Then he never came back, the way he said he would, and the way the people believed he would?"

"No, he never came back."

"And he never will come back, the way the stories said?"

"Oh, yes, I think he will."

For a few minutes Helen watched the water that was whirling by the side of the ship and I looked at the colors of the sea and the sky, that were growing brighter still. Then she said: "But if King Arthur really died and really was buried at Glastonbury and the three Queens didn't cure his wound at all, how can he come back?"

"I don't know whether I can make you see it quite as I do," I said, "but I will try. You know what it was that King Arthur tried to do. I have told you all these stories very badly, if you do not. He tried to save his people from the harms and the wrongs that they suffered. He tried to make all of them, the rich and the poor, the lords and the common people, good and brave and strong, true and gentle and noble. And he did make them better and happier than they were before. But the time had not come for all that he wished. After he passed away things got to be as bad almost, as they had been before. Some people, here in our own time, think that the world is not growing any better. That is because they look back only a few years, perhaps a hundred, and they do not see any change. There has been a change, though they do not see it. But they would see it, if they would look back to those fearful old days before Arthur came, yes, or half way back, for there were days then that were not much better. They would see then how selfish and how cruel men were and what wicked and heartless things they would do for a little power or a little gain.

"This was what Arthur tried to change, and he did change it partly, for a little while. But it was too soon to change it altogether. When he was gone everything soon came to be nearly as it was before. Yet it was never quite the same again, perhaps. Other good men came, not with the strength of Arthur, yet with a strength of their own. And they passed away too and left England and the world a little better than they had found them. Slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely, men have thought more, learned more, worked more, and so, slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely, they have grown wiser and juster and stronger, and so, too, they have grown freer and better and happier.

"The men of England and of our own country and of all the world are not yet what Arthur would have had them. They are still far from it, perhaps, yet they are nearer to it, and they are always getting nearer still. The way is long and it seems hopeless, sometimes, but it is not hopeless. And in some great, good time, far off, when this England and our own country and all the world come to be as just and noble and happy as Arthur tried to make his people – then cannot men say: 'King Arthur is not dead any more; he has come back and is among us again, for it is his will that guides us and it is his law that rules us now?' Do you see now how Arthur did not die, but only passed away, to come again? And do you see how he may come again, even though they buried him there at Glastonbury?"

"I don't know," Helen said, after she had thought for a minute. "I don't think I quite understand it, and any way, I would rather you would tell stories than talk like that."

But I had no more stories to tell just then, and so we only stood and watched the water and the sky, while the ship carried us along, farther and farther away from the dim, dark rocks, with the fog around them, and on toward the gold and the purple in the west.

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