Gilbert Warde was not of that great mould, but more human and less sure
of himself; and suddenly, as the sun went down, a strong desire of
death came upon him, and he wished that he were dead and buried under
the grass whereon he stood, for very discontent with himself. It would
be so simple, and none would mourn him much, except his men, perhaps,
and they would part his few possessions and serve another. He was a
burden to the earth, since he could do nothing well; he was a coward,
because he was afraid of a woman's eyes and had fled from their gaze
like a boy; he was a sinner deserving eternal fire since a touch of a
fair woman's hand could make him unfaithful for an instant to the one
woman he loved best. He had meant to tread the way of the Cross in true
faith, with unswerving feet, and his heart was the toy of women; he had
sworn the promises of knighthood, and he was already breaking them in
his thoughts; he was his evil mother's son, and he had not the strength
to be unlike her.
It was folly and madness, and Castignac, the Gascon knight, would have
laughed at him, or else would have believed that he was demented. But
to the Englishman it was real, for he was under that strange melancholy
which only Northmen know, and which is the most real suffering in all
the world. It is a dim sadness that gathers like a cloud about strong
men's souls, and they fear it, and sometimes kill themselves to escape
from it into the outer darkness beyond; but sometimes it drives them to
bad deeds and the shedding of innocent blood, and now and then the
better sort of such men turn from the world and hide themselves in the
abodes of sorrow and pain and prayer.
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