Love Among the Ruins Part 30

This time an answer came back to her.

"I--Flavian."

She caught her breath and shivered.

"What do you want at midnight, and in such a storm?"

"Let me in. Open to me."

"No--no."

"Open to me."

"Are you still mad?"

Silence held a moment. Then the voice rose again, with the hoa.r.s.e moan of the wind for an underchant.

"Liberty, liberty, I am free, I am free."

She shrank aside against the wall.

"The night gave me my chance; I have men in the wood. Let me in."

"Ah, messire."

"I plead for love and my own soul. I come to give you life, sword, all.

I cannot leave you; I am in outer darkness; you are in heaven. Let me in."

She stood swaying like a reed in a breeze. Her brain glowed like some rich scheme of colour, some sun-ravished garden. The ma.s.sed moan of a hundred viols seemed to sweep over her soul. G.o.d, for the courage to be weak!

"Yeoland! Yeoland! have you no word for me?"

Her hand trembled to the door; her fingers closed upon the key. She hesitated and her dangling rosary caught her glance; sudden revulsions of purpose flooded back; she stumbled away from the door like one about to faint.

"I cannot, I cannot," she said.

"I will break down the door."

The threat inspired her.

"No, no, not thus can you win me."

"I will break in."

"Attempt it, and I will call the guard. You will lose hope of me for ever. I swear it."

Her voice rang true and strong as a sword. With her judgment, silence fell again, and ages seemed to crawl over the world. When the man spoke again, his voice was less masterful, more pathetic.

"Have you no hope for me?" it said.

"I have given you life."

"What is life without love?"

She sighed very bitterly.

"Messire, you do not understand," she said.

"No, you are a riddle to me."

"A riddle that you may read anon; time will show you the truth. I tell you I am given to G.o.d. Only in one way can you win me."

"Are you solemn over this?"

"Solemn as death."

"Tell me that only way."

"Only by breaking the bonds about my soul, by liberating me from myself, by battle and through perils that you cannot tell."

"War and the sword!"

"Yet not to-night. You would need ten thousand men to take me from this cliff. I advise you for your good. Only by great power and the sword can you win your desire."

"By G.o.d, then, let it be war."

An utter sense of loneliness flooded over her. She sobbed in her throat, leant against the door, listened, waited. The wind roared without, the rain beat upon the quaking cas.e.m.e.nt, and she heard the mult.i.tudinous moaning of the pines. No voice companioned her, and the night was void.

A sudden access of pa.s.sion prompted her. She twisted at the key, tore the bolts aside, flung the door open. The stairway was empty. Rain whirled in her face, as she stood out in the wind, and called the man many times by name. It was vain and to no purpose.

Presently she re-entered the room, very slowly, and barred the door.

Her rosary rolled under her feet. She picked it up suddenly and dashed it away into a corner. The face on the crucifix seemed to leer at her from the wall.

PART III

XXII

Aurelius, physician of Gilderoy, flourished on the fatness of a fortunate reputation. He was a rubicund soul, clean and pleasant, with a neatly-trimmed beard, and a brow that seemed to dome a very various and abundant wisdom. He combined a sprightly humour and an enlivening presence with the reverent solemnity necessary to his profession.

As for the ladies of Gilderoy, they reverenced Master Aurelius with a loyalty that became perhaps less remarkable the more one considered the character of the worthy charlatan. Aurelius was an aesculap in court clothing. He was ignorant, but as no one realised the fact, the soul of Hippocrates would have been wasted in his body. Discretion was his crowning virtue. He was so sage, so intelligent, so full of a simple understanding for the ways of women, that the frail creatures could not love him enough. The confidences granted to a priest were nothing compared to the truths that were unmasked to his tactful ken. The physician is the priest of the body, a privileged person, suffered to enter the bed-chamber before the solemn rites of the toilet have been performed. He sees many strange truths, beholds fine and wonderful transfigurations, presides over the confessional of the flesh. And Aurelius never whispered of these mysteries; never displayed astonishment; always discovered extraordinary justification for the quaintest inconsistencies, the most romantic failings. He carried a sweet and sympathetic air of propriety about with him, like a perfume that exhaled a most comfortable odour of religion. His salves were delectable to a degree, his unguents and cosmetics remarkable productions. Dames took his potions in lieu of Malmsey, his powders in place of sweetmeats. Never did a more pleasant, a more tactful old hypocrite pander to the failings of an unregenerate world.

Aurelius stood in his laboratory one June morning, balancing a money-bag in his chubby pink palm. He seemed tickled by some subtlety of thought, and wonderfully well pleased with his own good-humour. He smiled, locked the money-bag in a drawer that stood in a confidential cupboard, and, taking his cap and walking-staff, repaired to the street. Pacing the narrow pavement like a veritable potentate, pretentious as any peac.o.c.k, yet mightily amiable from the superb self-satisfaction that roared in him like a furnace, he acknowledged the greetings of pa.s.sers-by with the elevation of a hand, a solemn movement of the head.

It was well to seem unutterably serious when under the eyes of the mob.