Love Among the Ruins Part 23

"What a world is this," he said, "when heaven comes at last, h.e.l.l yawns across the path. When summer burns, winter lifts its head. Even as a man would grow strong and pure, his own cursed shackles c.u.mber him.

To-night I say no more to you. Go, madame, pray for me. You shall see my face again."

He let life vanish under the pines, and rode back with the sunset on his armour, his face staring into the rising night. His men came round him, silent statues of steel. He rode slowly, and met his wife.

Her eyes were turbulent, her lips red streaks of scorn.

"Ha, sire, I have found you."

"Madame, I trust you are well?"

They looked at each other askance like angry dogs, as they rode side by side, and the night came down. The men left them to themselves, and went on ahead. A wind grew gusty over the moor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER ASKANCE LIKE ANGRY DOGS."]

"Messire, I have borne enough from you."

"Madame, is it fault of mine?"

His whole soul revolted from her with an immensity of hate. She c.u.mbered, clogged, crushed him. Mad brutality leapt in his heart towards her. He could have smitten the woman through with his sword.

"Five years ago----" she said.

"You did the wooing. d.a.m.nation, we have been marvellously happy."

She bit her lip and was white as the moon.

"Have a care, messire, have a care."

"Threats, threats."

"Have a care----"

"Look at my shield. Have I quartered your arms with mine? G.o.d's blood, there is nothing to erase."

"Ha!"

"We have no children."

"Go on."

"I shall send gold and an emba.s.sage to the Pope."

She clenched her hands and could not speak for the moment.

"You dare do this?"

"I dare ten thousand greater things than this."

"By G.o.d, messire."

"By G.o.d, woman, am I going down to h.e.l.l because you are my wife!"

She grew quiet very suddenly, a dangerous move in a woman.

"Very well," she said, "try it, dear lord. I am no fool. Try it, I am as strong as you."

And so they rode on towards Avalon together.

XVI

It is impossible for two persons of marked individuality to be much together without becoming more or less faceted one towards the other.

We appeal by sympathy, and inspire by contrast. What greater glory falls to a man's lot than to be chastened by the warm May of some girl's pure heart! Yeoland had felt the force of Fulviac's manhood; the more eternal and holier instincts were being stirred in him by a woman's face.

The man's life had been a transmigration. In his younger days the world had banqueted him; new poignancies had bubbled against his lips in the cup of pleasure. Later had come that inevitable weariness, that distaste of pomp, the mood that discovers vanity in all things. Finally he had set his heart upon a woman, a broken reed indeed, and had discovered her a hypocrite, according to the measure of her pa.s.sions. There had been one brief burst of blasphemy. He had used his dagger and had disappeared. There had been much stir at the time. A ruby had fallen from the King's crown. Some spoke of Palestine, others of a monastery, others of a cubit of keen steel.

Fulviac had begun life over again. He had fallen back upon elemental interests--had gone hungry, fought for his supper, slept many a storm out under a tree. The breath of the wilderness had winnowed out luxury; rain had scourged him into philosophic hardihood. He had learnt in measure that nothing pleases and endures like simplicity. Even his ambition was simple in its audacious grandeur.

Now the eyes of the daughter of Rual were like the eyes of a Madonna, and she stood in a circle of white lilies like the spirit of purity.

Fulviac had begun to believe in her a little, to love her a little. She stood above all other women he had known. The ladies of the court were superb and comely, and marvellously kind, but they loved colour and contemned the robe of white. They were like a rich posy for a man to choose from, scarlet and gold, azure, damask or purple. You could love their bodies, but you could not trust their souls.

As for the girl Yeoland, she was very devout, very enthusiastic, but no Agnes. Her rosary had little rest, and with the suspicions of one not utterly sure of herself, she had striven to make religion and its results satisfy her soul. In some measure she had succeeded. Yet there is ever that psychic echo, that one mysterious being, subtle as the stars, that may come before Christ in the heart. Transcendent spirit of idolatry! And yet it is often heaven-sent, seeing that it leads many a soul to G.o.d.

It had become Yeoland's custom to walk daily in the pine wood at the foot of the stairway leading from the northern room. She had discovered a quaint nook, a mile or more from the cliff, a nook where trees stood gathered in a dense circle about a gra.s.sy mound capped by a square of mouldering stone. It was a grave, nameless and without legend. Perhaps a hermit had crumbled away there under the sods, or the bones of some old warrior slept within rusty harness. None knew, none cared greatly.

Fulviac's men had hinted at treasure, yet even they were kept from desecrating the place by a crude and superst.i.tious veneration for the dead.

She had wandered here one day and had settled herself on the gra.s.sy slope of the grave. The ribbon of her lute lay over her shoulder. A breeze sang fitfully through the branches, and a golden haze shimmered down as from the clerestory windows of a cathedral. Her lute seemed sad when it made answer to her fingers. Thought was plaintive and not devotional, if one might judge by the mood of the music, and the notes were wayward and pathetically void of discipline.

It was while the girl thrummed idly at the strings that a vague sound floated down to her with the momentary emphasis born of a fickle wind.

It was foreign to the forest, or it would not have roused her as it did.

As she listened the sound came again from the west. It was neither the distant bay of a hound nor a horn's solitary note. There was something metallic about it, something musical. When it disappeared, she listened for its recurrence; when she heard it again, she puzzled over its nature.

The sound grew clearer at gradual intervals, and then ceased utterly.

The girl listened for a long while to no purpose, and then prepared to forget the incident. The decision was premature. She was startled anon by the sound breaking out at no great distance. There was no doubt as to its nature: it was the clanging of a bell.

Yeoland wondered who could be carrying such a thing in such a place.

Possibly some of Fulviac's men were coming home with stolen cattle, and an old bell-wether from some wild moorland with them.

The sound of the bell came very near; it seemed close amid the circling ranks of pines. Twigs were cracking too, and she heard the beat of approaching footsteps. Then her glance caught something visible, a streak of white in the shadows, moving like a ghost. The thing went amid the trees with the bell mute. The girl's doubts were soon set at rest as to whether she had been seen or no. The figure in grey slipped between the pines, and came out into the gra.s.s circle about the grave, cowled, masked, bell at girdle, a leper.

The girl stared at it with a cold flutter at her heart. The thing stood under the boughs motionless as stone. The bell gave never a tinkle; a white chin poked forward from under the hood; the masked face was in shadow. Then the bell jangled, and a gruff voice came from the cowl.

"Unclean, unclean!" it said; "avoid the white death, and give alms."

Yeoland obeyed readily enough, put a portion of the grave betwixt herself and the leper, fumbled in her pouch and threw the man a piece of silver. He came forward suddenly into the light, fell on his knees, put his hood back, plucked off the mask.