Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade Part 16

"You have changed," he said coldly. "I suppose you have grown up, as you call it."

For a moment Beatrix said nothing, but her lips trembled as if she were trying not to smile at what he said; and suddenly she could resist no longer, and laughed at him outright.

"I cannot say the same for you," she retorted presently; "you are certainly not grown up yet!"

This pleased Gilbert even less than what she had said before, for he was still young enough to wish himself older. He therefore answered her laughter with a look of grave contempt. She was woman enough to see that the time had come to take him by surprise, with a view of ascertaining the truth.

"How long has the Queen loved you?" she asked suddenly; and while she seemed not to be looking at him, she was watching every line in his face, and would have noticed the movement of an eyelash if there had been nothing else to note. But Gilbert was really surprised.

"The Queen! The Queen love me! Are you beside yourself?"

"Not at all," answered the young girl, quietly; "it is the talk of the court. They say that the King is jealous of you."

She laughed--gayly, this time, for she saw that he really had had no idea of the truth. Then she grew grave all at once, for it occurred to her that she had perhaps made a mistake in putting the idea into his head.

"At least," she said, as if correcting herself, "that is what they used to say last year."

"You are quite mad," he said, without a smile. "I cannot imagine how such an absurd idea could have suggested itself to you. In the first place, the Queen would never look at a poor Englishman like me--"

"I defy any woman not to look at you," said Beatrix.

"Why?" he asked, with, curiosity.

"Is this more simplicity, or is it more dulness?"

"Both, I suppose," answered Gilbert, in a hurt tone. "You are very witty."

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Wit is quite another thing."

Then her tone changed and her face softened wonderfully as she took his hand.

"I am glad that you do not believe it," she said; "and I am glad that you do not care to be thought handsome. But I think it is true that the Queen loves you, and if she sent to England for me, that was merely in order to bring you back to France. Of course she could not know--"

She checked herself, and he, of course, asked what she had meant to say, and insisted upon knowing.

"The Queen could not know," she said at last, "that we should seem so strange to each other when we met."

"Do I seem so strange to you?" he asked, in a sorrowful tone.

"No," she answered, "it is the other way. I can see that you expected me to be very different."

"Indeed, I did not," answered Gilbert, with some indignation. "At least," he added hastily, "if I thought anything about it, I did not expect that you would be half so pretty, or half--"

"If you thought anything about it," laughed Beatrix, interrupting him.

"You know what I mean," he said, justly annoyed by his own lack of tact.

"Oh, yes; of course I do--that is the trouble."

"If we are going to do nothing but quarrel," he said, "I am almost sorry that I came here."

Again her tone changed, but this time she did not touch his hand.

Hearing her voice, he expected that she would, and he was oddly disappointed that she did not.

"Nothing could make me sorry that you found me," she answered. "You do not know how hard I have tried to see you all through this last year!"

Her tone was tender and earnest, and though they had been long parted, she was nearer to him than he knew. His hand closed upon hers, and in the little thrill that he felt he forgot his disappointment.

"Could you not send me any word?" he asked.

"I am a prisoner," she answered, more than half in earnest. "It would be ill for you if the Queen found you here; but there is no danger, for they are all gone to the high ma.s.s in the cathedral."

"And why are you left behind?" he asked.

"They always say that I am not strong," she replied, "especially when there might be a possibility of your seeing me. She has never allowed me to be with all the others when the court is together, since I was brought over from England."

"That is why I did not see you at Vezelay," he said, suddenly understanding.

And with him to understand was to act. He might have had some difficulty in persuading himself at leisure that he was seriously in love with Beatrix, but being taken suddenly and unawares, he had not the slightest doubt as to what he ought to do. Before she could answer his last words, he had risen to his feet and was drawing her by the hand.

"Come," he cried. "I can easily take you by the way I came. It is only a step, and in five minutes you shall be as free as I am!"

But, to his great surprise, Beatrix seemed inclined to laugh at him.

"Where should we go?" she asked, refusing to leave her seat. "We should be caught before we reached the city gates, and it would be the worse for us."

"And who should dare touch us?" asked Gilbert, indignantly. "Who should dare to lay a hand on you?"

"You are strong and brave," answered Beatrix, "but you are not an army, and the Queen--but you will not believe what I say."

"If the Queen even cared to see my face, she could send for me. It is three weeks since I caught a glimpse of her, five hundred yards away."

"She is angry with you," answered the young girl, "and she thinks that you will wish to be with her, and will find some way of seeing her."

"But," argued Gilbert, "if she only meant to use your name in order to bring me from Rome, it would have been quite enough to have written that letter without having brought you at all."

"And how could she tell that I did not know where you were, or that I could not send you a message which might contradict hers?"

"That is true," Gilbert admitted. "But what does it matter, after all, since we have met at last?"

"Yes; what does it matter?"

They asked the answerless question of each other almost unconsciously, for they were finding each other again. There are plants which may be plucked up half-grown, before their roots have spread in the earth or their buds ripened to blossoming, and they may lie long in dry places till they seem withered and dead; but there is life in their fibres still, and the power to grow is in the shrivelled stem and in the dusty leaf, so that if they be planted again and tended they come at last to their due maturity. Gilbert and Beatrix might have lived out their lives apart, and in the course of years they would have been the merest memories to each other; but having met in the slow weaving of fate's threads, they became destined to win or lose together.

Their conversation needed but the slightest direction to take them back to the recollections of other times, and one of the first elements of lasting love is a common past, though that past may have covered but a few days. To that memory lovers go back as to the starting-point of life's journey, and though they may not speak of it often, yet its existence is the narrow ledge on which they have reared their stronghold in the perilous pa.s.s. And the English boy and girl had really lived a joint life, in their sympathies and surroundings, for years before a joint misfortune had overtaken them. In their meeting after a long separation they felt at the same time the rare delight of friendship renewed, and the still rarer charm of finding new acquaintances in old friends; but besides the well-remembered bond of habit, and the strong attraction of newly awakened interest, there was the masterful, nameless something upon which man's world has spun for all ages, as the material earth turns on its poles toward the sun-- always to hope beyond failure, always to life beyond death, always and forever to love beyond life. It is the spark from heaven, the stolen fire, the mask of divinity with which the poorest of mankind may play himself a G.o.d. It has all powers, and it brings all gifts--the gift of tongues, for it is above words; the gift of prophecy, for it has foreknowledge of its own sadness; the gift of life, for it is itself that elixir in which mankind boasts of eternal youth.

The two sat side by side and talked, and were silent, and talked again, understanding each other and happy in finding more to understand. The sun rose high and fell through the rustling leaves in fanciful warm tracery of light; down from the Bosphorus the sweet northerly breeze came over the rippling water, laden with the scent of orange-blossoms from the Asian sh.o.r.e and with the perfume of late roses from far Therapia. Between the trees they could see the white sails of little vessels beating to windward up the narrow channel, and now and then the dyed canvas of a fisherman's craft set a strangely disquieting note of colour upon the sea. There seemed to be no time, for all life was theirs, and it was all before them; an hour had pa.s.sed, and they had not told each other half; another came and went, and what there was to tell still gained upon them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEATRIX AND GILBERT]