Love Among the Ruins Part 47

"Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity.

"Why do you say that?"

"There is truth in the suspicion."

"Ah, what is life to me!"

"We Christians still have need of you."

The man's seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. The hot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body.

"Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me before the world?"

"Perhaps."

"I renounce this lying part."

"As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool."

"Ah, you are brutal."

He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in the spirit. His strong pride throttled pa.s.sion, twisting his rough face into tragic ugliness.

"No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart's sake that you should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again; pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed h.e.l.l in my grim years, and my words are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know this and ponder it: 'tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer the world to chuckle over one's tears."

x.x.xVIII

The royal host had ma.s.sed about the walls of Lauretia, and marched southwards to surprise Fulviac at St. Gore. Half the chivalry of the land had gathered under the standard of the King. Sir Simon of Imbrecour had come in from the west with ten thousand spears and five thousand bowmen. The Northerners under Morolt boasted themselves twoscore thousand men, and there were the loyal levies of the midland provinces to march under "The Golden Sun" upon the south. Never had such panoply of war glittered through the listening woods. Their march was as the onrush of a rippling sea; the noise of their trumpets as the cry of a tempest over towering trees.

Chivalry, golden champion of beauty, had much to avenge, much to expurgate. The peasant folk had plunged the land into ruin and red war.

Castles smoked under the summer sky; the n.o.ble dead lay unburied in the high places of pride. To the wolf cry of the people there could be no answer save the hiss of the sword. Before the high altar at Lauretia, the King had sworn on relics and the Scriptures, to deal such vengeance as should leave the land cowering for centuries in terror of his name.

Southwards from St. Gore there stretched for some fifteen leagues the province of La Belle Foret, a region of rich valleys and romantic woods, green and quiet under the tranquil sky. Its towns were mere gardens, smothered deep in flowers, full of cedars and fair cypresses. Its people were simple, happy, and devout. War had not set foot there for two generations, and the land overflowed with the good things of life.

Its vineyards purpled the valleys; its pastures harboured much cattle.

Its houses were filled with rich furniture and silks, chests laden with cloth of gold, caskets of gems, ambries packed with silver plate. The good folk of La Belle Foret had held aloof from the revolt.

Peace-loving and content in their opulence, they had no fondness for anarchy and war.

It was into this fair province that Fulviac led his arms on the march south for Gilderoy and the great forest by the sea. Belle Foret, neutral and luxurious, was spoil for the spoiler, stuff for the sword.

Plundering, marauding, burning, butchering, Fulviac's rebels poured through like a host of Huns. Strength promised licence; there was little asceticism in the cause, though the sacred banner flew in the van with an unction that was truly pharisaical. From that flood of war, the provincials fled as from a plague. It was Fulviac's policy to devastate the land, to hinder the march of the royal host. Desolation spread like winter over the fields; Fulviac's ravagers left ruin and despair and a great silence to mark their track.

The march became a b.l.o.o.d.y parable before three days had pa.s.sed. Fulviac had taken burning f.a.ggots upon his back, and the iron collar of war weighed heavy on him that autumn season. It was a grim moral and a terrible. He had called up fiends from h.e.l.l, and their antics mocked him. Storm as he would, even his strong wrath was like fire licking at granite. Death taunted him, and Murder rode as a witness at his side.

The mob of mad humanity was like a ravenous sea, hungry, pitiless, and insatiate. Even his stout heart was shocked by the b.e.s.t.i.a.l pa.s.sions war had roused. His men were mutinous to all restraint. Fight they would when he should marshal them; but for their l.u.s.ts they claimed a wolf-like and delirious liberty.

Yeoland the Saint rode on her white horse through La Belle Foret, like a pale ghost dazed by the human miseries of war. A captive, she had surrendered herself to Fate; her heart was as a sea-bird wearied by long buffetings in the wind. There was no desire in her for life, no spark of pa.s.sion, no hope save for the sounding of a convent bell. She imagined calmly the face of death. Her grave stretched green and quiet to her fancy, under some forest tree.

Even her hebetude of soul gave way at last before the horrors of that b.l.o.o.d.y march. She saw towns smouldering and flames licking the night sky, heard walls crack and roofs fall with a roar and an uprushing of fire. She saw the peasant folk crouching white and stupefied about their ruined homes. She heard the cry of the children, the wailing of women, the cracked voices of old men cursing Fulviac as he rode by. She saw the crops burnt in the fields; cattle slaughtered and their carcases left to rot in the sun.

The deeds of those grim days moved in her brain with a vividness that never abated. War with all its ruthlessness, its devilry, its riotous horror, burnt in upon her soul. The plash of blood, the ruin, the despair, appalled her till she yearned and hungered for the end. Life seemed to have become a hideous purgatory, flaming and shrieking under the stars.

She appealed to Fulviac with the vehemence of despair. The man was obdurate and moody, burdened by the knowledge that these horrors were beyond him. His very impotence was bitterness itself to his strong spirit. In the silent pa.s.sion of his shame, he buckled a sullen scorn about his manhood, scoffed and mocked when the woman pleaded. He was like a t.i.tan struggling in the toils of Fate, flinging forth scorn to mask his anguish. He had let war loose upon the land, and the riot mocked him like a turbulent sea.

One noon they rode together through a town that had closed its gates to them, and had been taken by a.s.sault. On the hills around stood the solemn woods watching in silence the scene beneath. Corpses stiffened in the gutters; children shrieked in burning attics. By the cross in the market-square soldiers were staving in wine casks, the split lees mingling with the blood upon the cobbles. Ruffians rioted in the streets. l.u.s.t and violence were loose like wolves.

Fulviac clattered through the place with Yeoland and his guards, a tower of steel amid the reeking ruins. He looked neither to the right hand nor the left, but rode with set jaw and sullen visage for the southern gate, and the green quiet of the fields. His tawny eyes smouldered under his casque; his mouth was as stone, stern yet sorrowful. He spoke never a word, as though his thoughts were too grim for the girl's ears.

Yeoland rode at his side in silence, shivering in thought at the scenes that had pa.s.sed before her eyes. She was as a lily whose pure petals quailed before the sprinkling plash of blood. Her soul was of too delicate a texture for the rude blasts of war.

She turned on Fulviac anon, and taunted him out of the fulness of her scorn.

"This is your crusade for justice," she said to him; "ah, there is a curse upon us. You have let fiends loose."

He did not retort to her for the moment, but rode gazing into the gilded glories of the woods. Even earth's peace was bitter to him at that season, but bitterer far was the woman's scorn.

"War is war," he said to her at last; "we cannot leave the King fat larders."

"And all this butchery, this ruin?"

"Blame war for it."

"And brutal men."

"Mark you," he said to her, with some deepening of his voice, "I am no G.o.d; I cannot make angels of devils. The sea has risen, can I cork it in a bottle, or tie the storm wind up in a sack? Give me my due. I am human, not a demi-G.o.d."

She understood his mood, and pitied him in measure, for he had a burden on his soul sufficient for a Hercules. His men were half mutinous; they would fight for him, but he could not stem their l.u.s.ts. He was as a stout ship borne upon the backs of riotous waves.

"Well would it have been," she said, "if you had never raised this storm."

"It is easy to be wise at the eleventh hour," he answered her.

"Can you not stay it even now?"

"Woman, can I stem the sea!"

"The blood of thousands dyes your hands."

He twisted in the saddle as though her words gored him to the quick.

His face twitched, his eyes glittered.

"My G.o.d, keep silence!"

"Fulviac."

"Taunt me no longer. Have I not half h.e.l.l boiling in my heart?"