Love Among the Ruins Part 44

"Girl, I am not a savoury object, fresh from the carnage of a breach.

Leave me to my surgeon. I would only save you pain. As for dying, I feel like an Adam. Go to your room, child; I will be with you before long."

She held both his hands, looked in his eyes a moment, then turned away with Modred and left him. She was very pale, and there was a tremor about her lips.

Irrelevant harness soon surrendered to skilled fingers. No great evil had been done, thanks to the fine temper of Flavian's armour; the few gashes, washed, oiled, and dressed, left him not seriously the worse for the night's tussle. Wine and food recovered his manhood. He was barbered, perfumed, dressed, and turned out by his servants, a very handsome fellow, with a fine pallor and a pathetic limp.

His first care was to see his own men attended to, the wounded properly bestowed, a good supply of food and wine dealt out. He had a brave word and a smile for all. As he pa.s.sed, he found Father Julian the priest administering the Host to those whose dim eyes were closing upon earth and sky.

Modred, that iron man, who never seemed weary, was stalking the battlements, and getting the place prepared for the next storm that should break. Flavian renounced responsibilities for the moment, and crossed the garden to Yeoland's room. He entered quietly, looked about him, saw a figure prostrate on the cushions of the window seat.

He crossed the room very quickly, knelt down and touched the girl's hair. Her face was hidden in the cushions. She turned slowly on her side, and looked at him with a wan, pitiful stare; her eyes were timid, but empty of tears.

"Ah, girl, what troubles you?"

She did not look at him, though he held her hands.

"Are you angry with me?"

"No, no."

"What is it, then?"

She spoke very slowly, in a suppressed and toneless voice.

"Will you tell me the truth?"

He watched her as though she were a saint.

"I have had a horrible thought in my heart, and it has wounded me to death."

"Tell it me, tell it me."

"That you had repented all----"

"Repented!"

"Of all the ruin I am bringing upon you; that you were beginning to think----"

He gave a deep cry.

"You believed that!"

She lay back on the cushions with a great sigh. Flavian had his arms about her, as he bent over her till their lips nearly touched.

"How could you fear!"

"I am so much a woman."

"Yes----"

"And something is all the world to me, even though----"

"Well?"

"I would die happy."

He understood her whole heart, and kissed her lips.

"Little woman, I had come here to this room to ask you one thing more.

You can guess it."

"Ah----"

"Father Julian."

She drew his head down upon her shoulder, and he knelt a long while in silence, with her bosom rising and falling under his cheek.

"I am happy," he said at last; "child-wife, child-husband, let us go hand in hand into heaven."

x.x.xV

So with Colgran and his rebels beating at the inner gate, Flavian of Gambrevault took Yeoland to wife, and was married that same eve by Father Julian in the castle chapel. There was pathetic cynicism in the service, celebrating as it did the temporal blending of two bodies who bade fair by their destinies to return speedily to dust. The chant might have served as a requiem, or a dirge for the fall of the mighty. It was a tragic scene, a solemn ceremony, attended by grim-faced men in plated steel, by frightened women and sickly children. Famine, disease, and death headed the procession, jigged with the torches, danced like skeletons about a bier. Trumpets and cannon gave an epithalamium; bones might have been scattered in lieu of flowers, and wounds espoused in place of favours. For a marriage pageant war pointed to the grinning corpses in the breach and the clotted ruins. It was such a ceremony that might have appealed to a Stoic, or to a Marius brooding amid the ruins of Carthage.

Peril chastens the brave, and death is as wine to the heart of the saint. Even as the sky seems of purer crystal before a storm, so the soul pinions to a more luminous heroism when the mortal tragedy of life nears the "explicit." As the martyrs exulted in their spiritual triumph, or as Pico of Mirandola beheld transcendent visions on his bed of death, when the Golden Lilies of France waved into luckless Florence, so Flavian and Yeoland his wife took to their hearts a true bridal beauty.

When the door was closed on them that night, a mysterious cavern, a spiritual shrine of gold, came down as from heaven to cover their souls.

They had no need of the subtleties of earth, of music and of colour, of flowers, or scent, or song. They were the world, the sky, the sea, the infinite. Imperishable atoms from the alembic of G.o.d, they fused soul with soul, became as one fair gem that wakes a thousand l.u.s.tres in its sapphire unity. To such a festival bring no fauns and dryads, no lewd and supple G.o.ddess, no Orphean flute. Rather, let Christ hold forth His wounded hands, and let the wings of angels glimmer like snow over the alchemy of souls.

Flavian knelt beside the bed and prayed. He had the girl's hand in his, and her dark hair swept in ma.s.ses over the pillow, framing her spiritual face as a dark cloud holds the moon. Her bed-gown was of the whitest lace and linen, like foam bounding the violet coverlet that swept to her bosom. The light from the single lamp burnt steadily in her great dark eyes.

Flavian lifted up his face from the coverlet and looked long at her.

"Dear heart, have no fear of me," he said.

She smiled wonderfully, and read all the fine philosophy of his soul.

"G.o.d be thanked, you are a good man."

"Ah, child, you are so wonderful that I dare not touch you; I have such grand awe in my heart that even your breath upon my face makes me bow down as though an angel touched my forehead."

"All good and great love is of heaven."

"Pure as the lilies in the courts of G.o.d. Every fragment of you is like to me as a pearl from the lips of angels; your flesh is of silver, your bosom as snow from Lebanon, girded with the gold of truth. Oh, second Adam, thanks be to thee for thy philosophy."

She put out her hands and touched his hair; their eyes were like sea and sky in summer, tranquil, tender, and unshadowed.