Fixedly she watches the attendant moving along the deck, past the sailors at their work, toward the solitary figure of the knight. She watches the two fixedly while their interview lasts.
Kurwenal, catching sight of the woman approaching, tugs at his master's mantle: "Attention, Tristan! Message from Isolde!" Tristan's start suggests how complete his abstraction, and what the effect of that name unexpectedly pronounced. _As Brangaene comes before him_, the stage-directions say, _he rapidly composes himself_. Deferently he inquires of his lady's wishes. Bragaene tells him, barely, that her lady wishes to see him. Then begins the series of his evasions, courteous as possible, but determined as courteous. "If she be weary of the long voyage, that is nigh ended. Before sunset we shall touch land. Whatsoever orders my lady have for me shall be faithfully carried out." Brangaene repeats the order: "Let Sir Tristan then go to her, such is our lady's will."--"Yonder where the green meadows are still coloured blue to the eye, my king awaits my lady. That I may escort her to him, soon will I approach the Bright One. To none would I yield the privilege." The maid repeats, still patiently: "Tristan, my lord, listen and attend: My lady requests your service,--that you should betake yourself to the place where she awaits you."--"At what place soever I be found, faithfully do I serve her, to the greater honour of women. If I should forsake the helm at this moment, how could I safely guide the keel to King Mark's land?" Brangaene's temper flashes a faint reflection of Isolde's fire. "Tristan, my lord, are you mocking me? If the stupid handmaid cannot make her meaning clear to you, hear my mistress's own words. This she bade me say: Be warned, a self-sufficient one, to fear the mistress! That is her behest,--Isolde's!" Without giving Tristan time to hesitate, Kurwenal jumps up: "May I frame an answer?"--"What would your answer be?" Tristan asks, for the moment at a loss. And Kurwenal, very loud, that his words may not fail to reach Isolde's ears: "This say to Madam Isolde: That he who made over to the maid of Ireland the crown of Cornwall and the inheritance of England cannot be the chattel of that same maid, presented by himself to his uncle. A lord of the world,--Tristan, the hero! I cry it aloud and do you report my words, though they should bring upon me the wrath of a thousand Madam Isoldes!" Tristan has vainly tried to silence him. As Brangaene indignantly hastens away, the irrepressible servant sings after her at the top of his voice a mocking fragment of ballad, popular no doubt in Cornwall: "Lord Morold came over the sea to Cornwall to collect tribute. An island floats in a lonely sea, there he now lies buried. His head, however, hangs in Ireland, the tribute paid by England. Hurrah for our lord Tristan! What a one is he to pay tribute!" Tristan drives the fellow off, orders him below. But the whole crew have taken up the last lines of the song and shout them with a will. Brangaene drags together the curtains, shutting from sight the cruel rabble. Isolde, who has with difficulty controlled herself, seems on the point of an outburst, but she quells it, and in the restored silence asks with forced composure: "But now, about Tristan?--I wish to be told exactly." Brangaene, at first unwilling, reports the interview. When she has finished, Isolde, whose anger has made room for a sorrowful intense dejection, reveals to her what explains the humour, to her so far inexplicable, of her mistress. Her deeply wounded feelings bleeding afresh at their exposure, Isolde makes the relation almost tearfully. "You have been a witness to my humiliation, hear now what brought it about. They sing to me derisive songs. I could reply if I would! Of a boat I could tell which, small and mean, drew to the coast of Ireland. In it a sick and suffering man, in woful plight, at the point of death...." She tells the story of her recognition in this Tantris of Tristan; of her resolve to take immediate vengeance upon him; of the look which disarmed her, her dismissal of him, healed, that he "might go home and burden her no more with the look of his eyes!"--"Oh, wonder!" breathes Brangaene. "Where were my eyes? The guest whom I once helped to nurse...?"--"You heard his praise a moment ago! 'Hurrah for our lord Tristan!' He was that unhappy man. He swore a thousand oaths of eternal gratitude to me, and truth. Now hear how a hero keeps his word. He whom I dismissed unknown as Tantris, as Tristan comes boldly back. On a proud tall ship he draws to land, and desires the heiress of Ireland in marriage for the worn King of Cornwall, for Mark, his uncle.