Faith, golden crown of the Christian! Self-mesmerism, subtle alchemy of the mind! How the balance of belief swings between these twain!
A spiritual conception born in a woman's brain is as a savour of rich spices sweetening all the world. How great a power of obstinacy stirs in one small body! A pillar of fire, a shining grail. She will bring forth the finest gems that hang upon her bosom, the ruby of heroism, the sapphire of pity. She will cast all her store of gold into the lap of Fate. Give to her some radiant dream of hope, and she may prove the most splendid idealist, even if she do not prove a wise one. Remember the women who watched about the Cross of Christ.
There had been trickery in the miracle, a tinge of flesh in the vision. The Virgin, in the ruck of religion, had suffered herself to be personated by a clever little "player" from Gilderoy, aided and idealised by a certain notorious charlatan who dealt in magic, was not above aiding ecclesiastical mummeries on occasions, and conspiring for the solemn production of miracles. A priest's juggling box, a secret door at the back of the altar used in bygone days for the manipulation of a wonder-working image, musicians, incense, and Greek fire. These had made the portent possible. As for Fulviac, rugged plotter, he was as grave as an abbot over the business; his words were wondrous beatific; he spoke of the interventions of Heaven with bated breath.
It was a superstitious age, touched with phantasy and gemmed with magic. Relics were casketed in gold and silver; holy blood amazed with yearly liquefactions the souls of the devout; dreamers gazed into mirrors, crystals, finger-nails, for visions of heaven. Jewels were poured in scintillant streams at the white feet of the Madonna. It was all done with rare mysticism, colour, and rich music. The moon ruled marriage, corn, and kine. The saints, like a concourse of angels, walked with melancholy splendour through the wilds.
As for the girl Yeoland, she had the heart of a woman in the noblest measure, a red heart, pure yet passionate. The world waxed prophetic that shrill season. She was as full of dreams and phantasies as an astrologer's missal. Nothing amazed her, and yet all earth was mysterious. The wind spoke in magic syllables; the trees were oracular; the stars, white hands tracing symbols in the sky. She was borne above herself on the pinions of ecstasy, heard seraph wings sweep the air, saw the glimmer of their robes passing the portals of the night. Mysticism moved through the world like the sound of lutes over a moonlit sea.
One March morning, Fulviac came to her in the northern chamber of the cliff. Yeoland had masses of scarlet cloth and threads of gold upon her knees, for she was broidering a banner, the banner of the Maid of Gilderoy. Her eyes were full of violet shadow. She wore a cross over her bosom, emeralds set in silver; a rosary, dangling on her wrist, told how her prayers kept alternate rhythm with her fingers. Fulviac crooked the knee to the crucifix upon the wall, sat down near her on a rich bench of carved cedar wood.
The man was in a beneficent mood, and beamed on her like a lusty summer. He had tidings on his tongue, tidings that he hoarded with the craft of an epicure. It was easy to mark when the world trundled well with his humour. He put forth smiles like a great oak whose boughs glisten in the sun.
You will tire yourself, little sister.
She looked at him with one of her solemn glances, a glance that spoke of vigils, soul-searchings, and prayer.
My fingers tire before my heart, she said to him.
Rest, rest.
Do I seem weary to you?
Nay, you are fresh as the dawn.
He brushed back the tawny hair from off his forehead, and the lines about his mouth softened.
I have news from the west.
Ah!
We gather and spread like fire in a forest. The mountain men are with us, ready to roll down from the hills with hauberk and sword. In two months Malgo will have sent the bloody cross through all the west.
The golden thread ran through the girl's white fingers; the beads of her rosary rattled; she seemed to be weaving the destiny of a kingdom into the device upon her banner.
How is it with us here? she asked him.
I have a thousand stout men and true camped upon the cliff. Levies are coming in fast, like steel to a magnet. In a month we shall outbulk a Roman legion.
And Gilderoy?
Gilderoy and Geraint will give us a score thousand pikemen.
The stars fight for us.
Fulviac took her lute from the carved bench and began to thrum the chords of an old song.
"
Spears crash, and swords clang, Fame maddens the world. Come battle and love. Iseult-- Ah, Iseult.
"He broke away with a last snap at the strings, and set the lute aside.
Bear with me, he said.
Her dark eyes questioned him over her banner.
I offer you the first victim.
Ah!
Flavian of Gambrevault.
An indefinite shadow descended upon the girl's face. The inspired radiance seemed dimmed for the moment; the crude realism of her thoughts rang in discord to her dreams. She lost the glimmering thread from her needle. Her hands trembled a little as she played with the scarlet folds of the banner.
Well?
A lad of mine bears news--a black-eyed rogue from the hills of Carlyath, sharp as a sword's point, quaint as an elf. I sent him gleaning, and he has done bravely. You would hear his tale from his own lips?
She nodded and seemed distraught.
Yes. Bring him in to me, she said.
Fulviac left her, to return with a slim youth sidling in behind him like a shadow. The lad had a nut-brown skin and ruddy cheeks, a pair of twinkling eyes, a thatch of black hair over his forehead. Bred amid the hills of Carlyath, where the women were scarlet Eves, and the land a paradise, he had served in Gilderoy as apprentice to an armourer. Carlyath's wilds and the city's roguery had mingled in him fantastic strains of extravagant sentiment and cunning. Half urchin, half elf, he stood with bent knees and slouched shoulders, his black eyes alert on Fulviac, his lord.
The man thrust him forward by the collar, with an eloquent gesture.
The whole tale. Try your wit.
The Carlyath lad advanced one foot, and with an impudent southern smirk, remarked--
This, madame, is an infatuated world.
Thus, sententiously delivered, he plunged into a declamation with a picturesque and fanciful extravagance that he had imbibed from the strolling romancers of his own land.
In the city of Gilderoy, he said, speaking very volubly and with many gestures, "there lives a lady of surpassing comeliness. Her eyes are as the sky, her cheeks as June roses, her hair a web of gold. She is a right fair lady, and daily she sits at her broad casement, singing, and plaiting her hair into shackles of gold. She has bound the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault in a net starred with poppies, scarlet poppies of the field, so that he ever dreams dreams of scarlet, and sees visions of lips warm as wine. Daily the Lord Flavian scours the country between Avalon and the fair city of Gilderoy, till the very dust complains of his fury, and the green grass curses his horse's heels. But the lady with the hair of gold compasses him like the sunset; she has stolen the eyes of heaven, and the stars are blind."
Fulviac smiled over the extreme subtlety of the rendering. It was a delicate matter, delicately handled. The Carlyath lad had wit, and a most seraphic tongue.
What more?
There is yet another lady at Avalon.
Well?
A lady whose name is Duessa, a lady with black hair and a blacker temper. Lord Flavian has a huge horror of her tongue. Therefore he rides like a thief, without trumpets, to Gilderoy.
Yet more.
The lad spread his hands with an inimitable gesture, shrugged, and heaved a most Christian sigh.
The Lady Duessa is the Lord Flavian's wife, he said.
Surely.
Therefore, sire, he is a coward.
The lad drew back with a bow and a scrape of the foot, keeping his eyes on the floor with the discretion of a veteran lackey. At a sign from Fulviac, he slipped away, and left Yeoland and the man alone.
The girl's hands were idle in her lap; the great scarlet banner trailed in rich folds about her feet. There was a white mask of thought upon her face, and her eyes searched the distance with an oblivious stare. All the strong discords of the past rushed clamorous to her brain; her consecrated dreams were as so many angels startled by the assaults of hell.
She rose from her chair, cast the casement wide, and stood gazing over the forest. Youth seemed in the breeze, and the clear voice of the Spring. The green woods surged with liberty; the strong zest of life breathed in their bosoms. In the distance the pines seemed to beckon to her, to wave their caps in windy exultation.
Fulviac had stood watching her with the calm scrutiny of one wise in the passionate workings of the soul. He suffered her to possess her thoughts in silence for a season, to come by a steady comprehension of the past. Presently he gathered the red banner, and hung it on the frame, went softly to her and touched her sleeve.
Shall they kill him on the road? he asked.
She pondered a moment, and did not answer him.
It is easy, he said, "and a matter of sheer justice."
The words seemed to steel her decision.
No, she said, "let them bring him here--to me."
So be it, he answered her.
Fulviac found her cold and taciturn, desirous of solitude. He humoured the mood, and she was still staring from the window when he left her. The woodland had melted before her into an oblivious mist. In its stead she saw a tower flaming amid naked trees, a white face staring heavenwards with the marble tranquillity of death.
Down through the woods of Avalon rode the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, down towards the forest track in the grey face of the dawn. In the meadows and beyond the orchards, water shone, and towers stood mistily. The voice of Spring pulsed in the air, songs of green woods, the wild wine of violets, pavements of primrose gold. Birds piped lustily in wood and thicket, and the ascending sun lavished his glittering archery from the chariots of the clouds.
The Lord Flavian was inordinately cheerful that morning, as he rode in green and red through the prophetic woods. Heart and weather were in kindred keeping, and his youth sang like a brook after April rains. The woods danced in dew. Far on its rocky hill the towers of Gilderoy would soon beckon him above the trees. Beneath the shadow of the cathedral tower stood a gabled house with gilded vanes and roofs of generous red. There in Gilderoy, in a room hung with cloth of purple and gold, white arms waited, and the bosom of a golden Helen held love like a red rose in a pool of milky spikenard.
Picture a slim but muscular man with the virile figure of a young David, a keen, smooth face, a halo of brown hair, eyes eloquent as a woman's. Picture a good grey horse trapped in red and green, full of fettle as a colt, burly as a bull. Picture the ermined borderings, the jewelled clasps, brigantine of quilted velvet, fur-lined bassinet bright as a star. Youth, clean, adventurous, aglow to the last finger-tip, impetuous to the tune of thirty breaths a minute. Youth with all its splendid waywardness, its generosities, its immense self-intoxications. Youth with the voice of a Golden Summer in its heart, and for its plume the gorgeous fires of eve.
Wealth often breeds apathy and parsimonious instincts. It is the beggar whose purse bursts with joy, whose soul blazes generous red upon the clouds. As for Flavian of Gambrevault and Avalon, he was rich but no miser, proud yet not haughty, sanguine but not vicious. Like many a man inspired by an instinctive idealism, his heart ran before his reason: they not having come cheek by jowl as in later years. He was very devout, yet very worldly; very ardent, yet over hasty. Mark him then, a lovable fool in the eyes of philosophy; a cup of mingled wine, both white and red. He was a great lord; yet his serfs loved him.
The Lady Duessa's parents, good folk, had been blessed with aspirations. Gambrevault and Avalon had bulked very gloriously under the steel-blue vault of pride. Moreover, their daughter was a sensuous being, who panted for poetic surroundings, and lived to music. A boy of twenty; a passionate, dark-eyed, big-bosomed houri of twenty and five; bell, book, and ring--such had been the bridal bargain consummated on church principles five years ago or more. A youth of twenty is not supremely wise concerning the world, or his own heart. The Lord Flavian's marriage had not proved a magic blessing to him. Parentally sealed marriage deeds are the edicts of the devil.
Quickly are the mighty fallen, and the chalices of love broken. It was no mere chance ambuscade that waited open-mouthed for Flavian, Lord of Gambrevault and Avalon, Warden of the Southern Marches, Knight of the Order of the Rose, as he rode that morning to Gilderoy, a disciple of Venus. In a certain perilous place, the road ran betwixt walls of rock, and under the umbrage of overhanging trees. Twenty men with pike and gisarme swarming out of the woods; a short scuffle and a stabbed horse; a gag in the mouth, a bandage over the eyes, a mule's back, half a dozen thongs of stout leather. That same evening the Lord Flavian was brought like a bale of merchandise into Fulviac's guard-room, and tumbled on a heap of straw in a corner.
They were grim men, these forest rangers, not given to pity, or the light handling of a feud. A poniard point was their pet oath, a whip of the sword the best word with an enemy. They bit their thumb nails at creation, and were not gentle in the quest of a creed. Fulviac heard their news, and commended them. They were like the ogres of the old fables; the red blood of a lusty aristocrat smelt fresh for the sword's supper.
The girl Yeoland was at her prayer-desk with a blazoned breviary under her fingers, when Fulviac came to her with tidings of the day's capture. She knelt with her hands crossed upon her bosom, as Fulviac stood in the darkened doorway. To the man she appeared as the Madonna in some picture of the Annunciation, the yellow light from the lamp streaming down upon her with a lustre of sanctity.
They have brought the boar home.
Dead?
Nay; but his corpse candle walks the cavern.
For the girl it was a descent from spiritual themes to the stark realism of life. She left her prayer-desk with a little sigh. Her hands trembled as she drew a scarlet cloak about her, and fastened it with a girdle of green leather. Her eyes dwelt on Fulviac's face with a species of dusky pain.
Come, he said to her.
Whither?
To judge him.
Not before all, not in the guard-room.
Leave it to me, he said. "Be forewarned. We deal with no mere swashbuckler."
They went together to Fulviac's parlour, where a great brazen lamp hung from the roof, and a book bound in black leather lay chained on the table. Yeoland took the man's carved chair, while he stood behind her leaning on the rail. She was paler than was her wont. Now and again she pressed a hand to her breast, as though to stay the too rapid beating of her heart.
Two guards bearing partisans came in from the guard-room with a man bound and blindfold between them. A third followed, bearing a two-handed sword naked over his shoulder. He was known as Nord of the Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the bound man's face.
In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man, slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong, the grey eyes clear and fearless. Moreover there was a certain lonely look about him that invoked pity, and angered her in an enigmatic way. She was wrath with him for being what he was, for contradicting the previous imaginings of her mind.
Flavian of Gambrevault stood bound before her, an aristocrat of aristocrats, outraged in pride, yet proud beyond complaint. The self-mastery of his breeding kept him a stately figure despite his tumbling and his youth, one convinced of lordship and the powerful splendour of his name. The whole affair to him was illogical, preposterous, insolent. A gentleman of the best blood in the kingdom could not be hustled out of his dignity by the horse-play of a bevy of cut-throats.
Possibly the first vision to snare the man's glance was the elfin loveliness of the girl, who sat throned in the great chair as on a judgment seat. He marked the rose-white beauty of her skin, her sapphire eyes gleaming black in certain lights, her ebon hair bound with a fillet of sky-blue leather. Moreover, it was plain to the man in turn that this damoisel in the red gown was deciphering his features in turn with a curiosity that was no vapid virtue. As for Fulviac, he watched them both with his amber-brown eyes, eyes that missed no movement in the mask of life. To him the scene under the great brazen lamp was a study in moods and emotions.
The aristocrat was the first to defy the silence. He had stared round the room at his leisure, and at each of its motionless figures in turn. The great sword, slanted in gleaming nakedness over Nord's shoulder, appeared to fascinate him for the moment. Despite his ambiguous sanctity, he showed no badge of panic or distress.
Ignoring the woman, he challenged Fulviac, who leant upon the chair rail, watching him with an enigmatic smile.
Goodman in the red doublet, quoth he, "when you have stared your fill at me, I will ask you to read me the moral of this fable."
Fulviac stroked his chin with the air of a man who holds an adversary at some subtle disadvantage.
Messire, he said, "address yourself to madame--here; you are her affair in the main."
The Warden of the Southern Marches bowed as by habit. His grey eyes reverted to Yeoland's face, searching it with a certain courteous curiosity that took her beauty for its justification. The woman was an enigma to him, a most magical sphinx whose riddle taunted his reason.
Madame, he began.
The girl stiffened in her chair at the word.
You hold me at a disadvantage, seeing that I am ignorant of sin or indiscretion against you. If it is a question of gold----
Messire!
He swept her exclamation suavely aside and ran on mellifluously.
If it is a question of gold, let me beseech you to be frank with me. I will covenant with you instanter. My seneschal at Gambrevault will unbolt my coffers, and ease your greed. Pray be outspoken. I will renounce the delight of lodging here for a purse of good rose nobles.
There was the faintest tinge of insolence in the man's voice, an insolence that exaggerated to the full the charge of plunder in his words. Whether he hinted at blood money or no, there was sufficient poison in the sneer to fire the brain and scorch the heart to vengeance.
The woman had risen from her chair, and stood gripping the carved woodwork with a passion that set her arms quivering like bands of tightened steel. The milk-white calm had melted from her face. Wrath ran riot in her blood. So large were her pupils that her eyes gleamed red.
Ha, messire, I bring you to justice, and you offer me gold.
The man stared; his eyes did not quail from hers.
Justice, madame! Of what sin then am I accused? On my soul, I know not who you are.
She calmed herself a little, shook back her hair from her shoulders, fingered her throat, breathing fast the while.
My name, messire? Ha, you shall have it. I am Yeoland, daughter of that Rual of Cambremont whom you slaughtered at the gate of his burning house. I--am the sister of those fair sons whom you did to death. Blood money, forsooth! God grant, messire, that you are in honest mind for heaven, for you die to-night.
The man had bent to catch her words. He straightened suddenly like a tree whose throat is loosed from the grim grip of the wind. He went grey as granite, flushed red again as a dishonoured girl. The words had touched him with the iron of truth.
Hear me, he said to her.
Ah, you would lie.
By Heaven, no; give me an hour's justice.
Murderer.
Before God, you wrong me.
He stood with twitching lips, shackled hands twisting one within the other. For the instant words eluded him, like fruit jerked from the mouth of a thirst-maddened Tantalus. Anon, his manhood gathered in him, rushed forth redly like blood from a stricken throat.
Daughter of Rual, hear me, I tell you the truth. I, Flavian of Gambrevault, had in my pay a company of hired 'spears,' rough devils from the north. The braggarts served me against John of Brissac, were half their service drunk and mutinous. When Lententide had come, their captain swore to me, 'Lording, pay us and let us go. We have spilt blood near Gilderoy,' scullion blood he swore, 'give us good bounty, and let us march.' So at his word I gave them largesse, and packed them from Gambrevault with pennons flying. Methought they and their brawlings were at an end. Before God and the saints, I never knew of this.
Yeoland considered him, strenuous as he seemed towards truth. He was young, passionate, sanguine; for one short moment she pitied him, and pondered his innocence in her heart. It was then that Fulviac plucked at her sleeve, spoke in her ear, words that hardened her like a winter frost.
She stared in the man's eyes, as she gave him his death-thrust with the sureness of hate.
Blood for blood, were her words to him.
Is this justice!
I have spoken.
Monstrously. Hear me----
Messire, make your peace with Heaven, I give you till daylight.
The man stumbled against the table, white as the moon. Youth strove in him, the crimson fountain of life's wine, the wild cry of the dawn. His eyes were great with a superhuman hunger. Fulviac's strong voice answered him.
Hence, hence. At dawn, Nord, do your duty.
该作者其它作品
《The Red Saint》
Give doubt the password, and the outer battlements are traitorously stormed. Parley with pity, and the white banner flutters on the keep.
Provided her emotions inspire her, a woman is strong; let her take to logic, and she is a rushlight wavering in the wind. In her red heart lies her divinity; her feet are of clay when reason rules her head.
The girl Yeoland took doubt to her chamber that night, a malicious sprite, sharp of wit and wild of eye. All the demons of discord were loosed in the silence of the night. Pandora's box stood open, and the hours were void of sleep; faces crowded the shadows, voices wailed in the gloom. Her thoughts rioted like frightened bats fluttering and squeaking round a torch. Sleep, like a pale Cassandra, stood aloof and watched the mask of these manifold emotions.
Turn and twist as she would amid her fevered pillows, a wild voice haunted her, importunate and piteous. As the cry of one sinking in a stormy sea, it rang out with a passionate vehemence. Moreover, there was a subtle echo in her own heart, a strong appeal that did not spare her, toss and struggle as she would. Decision fluttered like a wounded bird. Malevolence rushed back as an ocean billow from the bastion of a cliff that emblemed mercy.
With a beating of wings and a discordant clamour, a screech-owl buffeted the casement. A lamp still burnt beneath the crucifix; the glow had beaconed the bird out of the night. Starting up with a shiver of fear, she quenched the lamp, and crept back to bed. The darkness seemed to smother her like a cloak; the silence took to ghostly whisperings; a death-watch clicked against the wall.
The night crawled on like a funeral cortège. Baffled, outfaced, sleepless, she rose from her tumbled bed, and paced the room as in a fever. Still wakefulness and a thousand dishevelled thoughts that hung about her like her snoodless hair. Again and again, she heard the distant whirr and rattle of wheels, the clangour of the wire, as the antique clock in Fulviac's chamber smote away the hours of night. Each echo of the sound seemed to spur to the quick her wavering resolution. Time was flying, jostling her thoughts as in a mill race. With the dawn, the Lord Flavian would die.
Anon she flung the casement wide and stared out into the night. A calm breeze moved amid the masses of ivy, and played upon her face. She bared her breast to its breath, and stood motionless with head thrown back, her white throat glimmering amid her hair. Below, the sombre multitudes of the trees showed dim and ghostly, deep with mystery. A vague wind stirred the branches; the dark void swirled with unrest, breaking like a midnight sea upon a cliff. A few straggling stars peeped through the lattice of the sky.
She leant against the sill, rested her chin upon her palms, and brooded. Thoughts, fierce, passionate, and clamorous, came crying like gusts of wind through a ruined house. Death and dead faces, blood, the yawn of sepulchres, life and the joy of it, all these passed as visions of fire before her fancy. Vengeance and pity agonised her soul. She answered yea and nay with the same breath; condemned and pardoned with contradicting zeal. Youth lifted up its face to her, piteous and beautiful. Death reached out a rattling hand into her bosom.
Presently, a far glow began to creep into the sky; a gradual greyness absorbed the shadows of the night. The day was dawning. From the forest, the trembling orisons of the birds thrilled like golden light into the air. Unutterable joy seemed to flood forth from the piping throats. Even the trees seemed to quiver to the sound. With a rush of bitter passion, she closed the casement, cast herself upon her bed, and strove to pray.
Again came the impotent groping into nothingness. A dense mist seemed to rise betwixt her soul and the white face of the Madonna. Aspiration lessened like an afterglow, and dissolved away into a dark void of doubt. Prayer eluded her; the utterances of her heart died in a miserable endeavour, and she could not think.
The spiritual storm wore itself away as the dawn streamed in with a glimmer of gold. Yeoland lay and stared at the casement, and the figure of Sebastian rendered radiant by the dawn, the whiteness of his limbs tongued with dusky rills of blood, where the barbs had smitten into the flesh. Sombre were the eyes, and shadowy with suffering. A halo of gold gilded the youthful face. The painted glass about him blazed like a shower of gems.
The Sebastian of the casement recalled to her with wizard power the face of the man whom death claimed at dawn. The thought woke no new passion in her. The night's vigil had left her reason like a skein of tangled silk, and with the day she verged towards a wearied apathy. The voice of pity in her waned to an infrequent whisper that came like the rustling of leaves on a summer night. She realised that it had dawned an hour or more; that the man had knelt and fallen to Nord's sword.
Suddenly the silence was snapped by a far outcry sounding in the bowels of the cliff. Gruff voices seemed to echo and re-echo like breakers in a cavern. A horn blared. She heard the thudding of a door, the shrilling of mail, the clangour of iron steps passing up the gallery.
Shivering, she raised herself upon her elbow to listen. Were they bringing her the man's head, grey and blood-dabbled, with closed lids and mangled neck? She fell back again upon her pillows, pressed her hands to her face with a great revulsion of pity, for the image had burnt in upon her brain.
The clangour of harness drew near, with an iron rhythm as of the march of destiny. It ceased outside the door. A heavy hand beat upon the panelling.
Who knocks?
Her own voice, strained and shrill, startled her like an owl's hoot. Fulviac's deep bass answered her from the passage.
Unbar to me, I must speak with you.
She started up from the bed in passionless haste, ran to a closet, drew out a cloak and wrapped it about her shoulders. Her bare feet showed white under her night-gear as she slid the bolt from its socket, and let the man in. He was fully armed save for his salade, which he carried in the hollow of his arm. His red cloak swept his heels. A tower of steel, there was a clangorous bluster about him that bespoke action.
The girl had drawn apart, shivering, and gathering her cloak about her, for in the gloom of the place she had thought for an instant that Fulviac carried a mangled head.
A rider has brought news, he said to her. "John of Brissac's men have taken Prosper the Preacher, to hang him, as their lord has vowed, over the gate of Fontenaye. They are on the march home from Gilderoy, ten lances and a company of arbalestiers. I ride to ambuscado them. Prosper shall not hang!"
She stood with her back to the casement, and looked at him with a restless stare. Her thoughts were with the man whose grey eyes had pleaded with her through the night. Her fears clamoured like captives at the gate of a dungeon.
What is more, this vagabond of Avalon has been begging twelve hours' grace to scrape his soul clean for Peter.
Ah! she said, with a sudden stark earnestness.
I will give him till sunset----
If I suffer it----
The dog has spirit. I would thrust no man into the dark till he has struck a bargain with his own particular saints.
She drew back, sank down into a chair with her hair half hiding her face.
You are right in being merciful, she said very slowly.
Magic riddle of life; rare roseate rod of love. Was it youth leaping towards youth, the cry of the lark to the dawn, the crimson flowering of a woman's pity? The air seemed woven through with gold. A thousand lutes had sounded in the woods. Voiceless, she sat with flickering lids, amazed at the alchemy that had wrought ruth out of hate.
Fulviac had drawn back into the gloom of the gallery. He turned suddenly upon his heel, and his scabbard smote and rang against the rock.
I take all the men I have, he said to her, "even the dotard Jaspar, for he knows the ways. Gregory and Adrian I leave on guard; they are tough gentlemen, and loyal. As for the lordling, he is well shackled."
Yeoland was still cowering in her chair with the mysterious passions of the moment.
You will return? she asked him.
By nightfall, if we prosper; as we shall.
He moved two paces, stayed again in his stride, and flung a last message to her from the black throat of the passage.
Remember, there is no recantation over this business. The man is my affair as well as yours. He is a power in the south, and would menace us. Remember, he must die.
He turned and left her without more palaver. She heard him go clanging down the gallery, heard the thunder of a heavy door, the braying of a horn. A long while she sat motionless, still as stone, her hands lying idle in her lap. When an hour had passed, the sun smote in, and found her kneeling at her prayer-desk, her breviary dewed with tears.
Fulviac passed away that morning into the forest, a shaft of red amid the mournful glooms. Colour and steel streamed after him fantastically. The great cliff, silent and desolate, basked like a leviathan in the sun.
Of the daylight and its crown of gold, the girl Yeoland had no deep joy. When she had ended her passion over the blazoned pages of her breviary, and mopped her tears with a corner of her gown, she rose to realism, and turned her mood to the cheating of the dues of time.
The hours lagged with enough monotony to degenerate a saint; Yeoland was very much a woman. The night had left her a legacy of evil. She had shadows under her eyes, and a constant swirl of thoughts within her brain that made solitude a torture-house, full of prophetic pain. There was her lute, and she eschewed it, seeing that her fingers seemed as ice. As for her embroidery, the stitches wandered haphazard, wrought grotesque things, or lost all method in a stupor of sloth. She threw the banner aside in a fume at last, and let her broodings have their way.
The forenoon crawled, like a beggar on a dusty high-road in the welt of August. Time seemed to stand and mock her. Hour by hour, she was tortured by the vision of steel falling upon a strong young neck, of a white face lying in a pool of blood, of a dripping carcase and a sweating sword. Though the vision maddened her, what could her weak hands do? The man was shackled, and guarded by men with whom she dared not tamper. Moreover, she remembered the last look in Fulviac's keen eyes.
Towards evening she grew rabid with unrest, fled from the cave by the northern stair, and took sanctuary amid the tall shadows of the forest. The pine avenues were ever like a church to her, solemn, stately, sympathetic as night. There was nought to anger, nought to bring discord, where the croon of the branches soothed like a song.
It was as she played the nun in this forest cloister, that a strange thought challenged her consciousness under the trees. It was subtle, yet full of an incomprehensible bitterness, that made her heart hasten. Even as she considered it, as a girl gazes at a jewel lying in her palm, the charm flashed magic fire into her eyes. This victim for the sword lay shackled to the wall in the great guard-room. She would go and steal a last glance at him before Fulviac and death returned.
Stairway, bower, and gallery were behind her. She stood in Fulviac's parlour, where the lamp burnt dimly, and harness glimmered on the walls. The door of the room stood ajar. She stole to it, and peered through the crack left by the clumsy hingeing, into the lights and shadows of the room beyond.
At the lower end of a long table the two guards sat dicing, sprawling greedily over the board, the lust of hazard writ large in their looks. The dice kept up a continuous patter, punctuated by the intent growls of the gamesters. By the sloping wall of the cavern, palleted on a pile of dirty straw, lay the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, with his hands shackled to a staple in the rock. He lay stretched on his side, with his back turned towards the light, so that his face was invisible to the girl behind the door.
She watched the man awhile with a curious and dark-eyed earnestness. There was pathos in the prostrate figure, as though Hezekiah-like the man had turned to the bare rock and the callous comfort despair could give. Once she imagined that she saw a jerking of the shoulders, that hinted at something very womanish. The thought smote new pity into her, and sent her away from the cranny, trembling.
Yeoland withdrew into Fulviac's room, and thence into the murk of the gallery leading to her bower. A sudden sense of impotence had flooded into her heart; she even yearned for some shock of Fate that might break the very bonds that bound her to her vengeance, as to a corpse. On the threshold of her room, a sudden sound brought her to a halt like a hand thrust out of the dark to clutch her throat. She stood listening, like a miser for thieves, and heard much.
A curse came from the guard-room, the crash of an overturned bench, the tingling kiss of steel. She heard the scream as of one stabbed, a smothered uproar, an indiscriminate scuffling, then----silence. She stood a moment in the dark, listening. The silence was heavy and implacable as the rock above. Fear seized her, a lust to know the worst. She ran down the gallery into Fulviac's room. The door was still ajar; she thrust it open and entered the great cavern.
Her doubts elapsed in an instant. At the long table, a man sat with his head pillowed on his arms. A red rivulet curled away over the board, winding amid the drinking horns, isleting the dice in its course. On the floor lay the second guard, a smudge of crimson oozing from his grey doublet, his arms rigid, his hands clawing in the death-agony. At the end of the table stood the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, free.
Three cubits of steel had tangled the plot vastly in the passing of a minute. The climax was like a knot of silk thrust through with a sword. The two stood motionless a moment, staring at each other across the length of the table, like a couple of mutes over a grave. The man was the first to break the silence.
Madame, he said, with a certain grand air, and a flippant gesture, "suffer me to condone with you over the lamentable tricks of Fortune. But for gross selfishness on my part, I should still be chastening myself for the unjust balancing of our feud. God wills it, seemingly, that I should continue to be your debtor."
Despite her woman's wit, the girl was wholly puzzled how to answer him. She was wickedly conscious in her heart of a subtle gratitude to Heaven for the sudden baulking of her malice. The man expected wrath from her, perhaps an outburst of passion. Taking duplicity to her soul, she stood forward on the dais and tilted her chin at him with dutiful defiance.
Thank my irresolution, messire, she said, "for this reprieve of fortune."
He came two steps nearer, as though not unminded to talk with her in open field.
At dawn I might have had you slain, she continued, with some hastening of her tongue; "I confess to having pitied you a little. You are young, a mere boy, weak and powerless. I gave you life for a day."
The man reddened slightly, glanced at the dead men, and screwed his mouth into a dry smile.
Most harmless, as you see, madame, he said. "For your magnanimity, I thank you. Deo gratias, I will be as grateful as I may."
She stood considering him out of her dark, long-lashed eyes. The man was good to look upon, ruddy and clean of lip, with eyes that stared straight to the truth, and a pose of the head that prophesied spirit. The sunlight of youth played sanguine upon his face; yet there was also a certain shadow there, as of premature wisdom, born of pain. There were faint lines about the mouth and eyes. For all its sleek and ruddy comeliness, it was not the face of a boy.
Messire, she said to him at last.
Madame.
He who lurks over long in the wolf's den may meet the dam at the door.
He smiled at her, a frank flash of sympathy that was not devoid of gratitude.
Haste would be graceless, he said to her.
How so? she asked him.
Ha, Madame Yeoland, have I not watched my arms at night before the high altar at Avalon? Have I not sworn to serve women, to keep troth, and to love God? You judge me hardly if you think of me as a butcher and a murderer. For the death of your kinsfolk I hold myself ashamed.
There was a fine light upon his face, a power of truth in his voice that was not hypocritic. The girl stared him over with a certain critical earnestness that boasted a gleam of approval.
Fair words, she said to him; "you did not speak thus to me last eve."
Ah! he cried, beaming on her, "I was cold as a corpse; nor could I whine, for pride."
And your shackles?
He laughed and held up both hands; the wrists were chafed and bloody.
It was ever a jest against me, he said, "that I had the hands of a woman, white and meagre, yet strong with the sword. Your fellows thrust a pair of wristlets on me fit for a Goliath, strong, but bulky. My hands have proved my salvation. I pulled them through while the guards diced, crept for a sword, gained it, and my freedom."
She nodded, and was not markedly dismal, though the wind had veered against her cause. The man with the grey eyes was a being one could not quarrel with with easy sincerity. Probably it did not strike her at the moment that this friendly argument with the man she had plotted to slay was a contradiction worthy of a woman.
The Lord of Avalon meanwhile had drawn still nearer to the girl upon the dais. His grey eyes had taken a warmer lustre into their depths, as though her beauty had kindled something akin to awe in his heart. He set the point of the sword on the floor, his hands on the hilt, and looked up at the white face medallioned in the black splendour of its hair.
Madame, he said very gravely, "it is the way of the world to feel remorse when such an emotion is expedient, and to fling penitence into the bottomless pit when the peril is past. I shall prove to you that mine is no such April penitence. Here, on the cross of my sword, I swear to you a great oath. First, that I will build a chapel in Cambremont glade, and establish a priest there. Secondly, I will rebuild the tower, refit it royally, attach to it cottars and borderers from mine own lands. Lastly, mass shall be said and tapers burnt for your kinsfolk in every church in the south. I myself will do such penance as the Lord Bishop shall ordain for my soul."
The man was hotly in earnest over the vow--red as a ruby set in the sun. Yeoland looked down upon him with the glimmer of a smile upon her lips as he kissed the cross of the sword.
You seem honest, she said to him.
Madame, on this sword I swear it. It is hard to believe any good of an enemy. Behold me then before you as a friend. There is a feud betwixt us, not of my willing. By God's light I am eager to bridge the gulf and to be at peace.
She shook her head and looked at him with a sudden mysterious sadness. Such a pardon was beyond belief, the man's pure ardour, nothing but seed cast upon sand. Fulviac, a tower of steel, seemed to loom beyond him--an iron figure of Fate, grim and terrible.
This can never be, she said.
His eyes were honestly sorrowful.
Is madame so implacable?
Ah! she said, "you do not understand me."
He stood a moment in thought, as though casting about in his heart for the reason of her sternness. Despite her wrongs, he was assured by some spirit voice that it was not death that stalked betwixt them like an angel of doom. As he stood and brooded, a gleam of the truth flashed in upon his brain. He went some steps back from her, as though destiny decreed it that they should sever unabsolved.
Your pardon, madame, he said to her; "the riddle is plain to me. I no longer grope into the dark. This man, here, is your husband."
She went red as a rose blushing on her green throne at the coming of the dawn.
Messire.
Your pardon.
Ah, I am no wife, she said to him. "God knows but for this man I should be friendless and without home. He has spread honour and chivalry before my feet like a snow-white cloak. Even in this, my godless vengeance, he has served me."
The man strode suddenly towards the dais, with his face turned up to hers. A strange light played upon it, half of passion, half of pity. His voice shook, for all its sanguine strength.
Ah, madame, tell me one thing before I go.
Messire.
Have I your pardon?
If you love life, messire, leave me.
Have I your pardon?
Go! ere it is too late.
Like a ghostly retort to her appeal came the sound of armed men thundering over the bridge. Their rough voices rose in the night's silence, smitten through with the clash and clangour of arms. Fulviac had caught John of Brissac's company in the woods by Gilderoy. There had been a bloody tussle and much slaughter. Triumphant, they were at the gate with Prosper the Preacher in their midst.
The pair in the cavern stared at each other with a mute appeal.
Fulviac, said the girl in a whisper.
The door!
It is barred.
They were silent and round-eyed, as children caught in the midst of mischief. Mailed fists and pike staves were beating upon the gate. A babel of impatience welled up without.
Adrian, Gregory!
Lazy curs!
Unbar, unbar!
Mocking silence leered in retort. Yeoland and the Lord of Avalon were still as mice. The din slackened and waned, as though Fulviac's men were listening for sound of life within. Then came more blows upon the gate; fingers fumbled at the closed grill. The man Gregory lay and stared at the rocky roof; Adrian sat with his face pooled by his own blood.
A fiercer voice sounded above the clamour. It was Fulviac's. The girl shivered as she stood.
Ho, there, Gregory, Adrian; what's amiss with ye?
Still silence, mocking and implacable. The lull held for the moment; then the storm gathered.
Break down the gate, roared the voice; "by God, we will see the bottom of this damned silence."
The Lord Flavian of Avalon had stood listening with the look of a man cooped in a cavern, who hears the sea surging to his feet. He glanced at the dead guards, and went white. To save his soul from purgatory it behoved him to act, and to act quickly. A single lamp still burnt in the oratory of hope. He went near to the girl on the dais, and held up the crossed hilt of his sword.
By the Holy Cross, mercy!
She cast a frightened glance into his eyes, and continued mute a moment. The thunder grew against the gate, the crash of steel, a rending din that went echoing into all the pits and passage-ways of the place. Fulviac's men had dragged the trunk of a fallen pine up the causeway, and were charging the gate till the timber groaned.
The man, with his sword held like a crucifix, stood and pleaded with his eyes.
Mercy! he said; "you know this warren and can save me."
Are you a craven?
Craven? before God, no, only desperate. What hope have I unharnessed, one sword against fifty?
For yet another moment she appeared irresolute, dazed by the vision of Fulviac's powerful wrath. He was a stark man and a terrible, and she feared him. The timbers of the gate began to crack and gape. Flavian of Avalon lifted up his voice to her with a passionate outburst of despair.
God, madame, I cannot die. I am young, look at me, life is at its dawn. By your woman's mercy, hide me. Give me not back to death.
His bitter agitation smote her to the core. She looked into his eyes; they were hungry as love, and very piteous. There could be no sinning against those eyes. Great fear flooded over her like a green billow, bearing her to the inevitable. In a moment she was as hot to save him as if he had been her lover.
Come, she said, "quick, before the gate gives."
She led him like the wind through Fulviac's parlour, and down the gallery to her own bower. It was dark and lampless. She groped to the postern, fumbled at the latch and conquered it. Night streamed in. She pushed the man out and pointed to the steps.
The forest, she said, "for your life; bear by the stars for the north."
A full moon had reared her silver buckler in the sky. The night was sinless and superb, drowned in a mist of phosphor glory. The man knelt at her feet a moment, and pressed his lips to the hem of her gown.
The Virgin bless you!
Go----
I shall remember.
He descended and disappeared where the trees swept up with wizard glimmerings to touch the cliff. When he had fled, Yeoland passed back into the cavern, and met Fulviac before the splintered gate with a lie upon her lips.
该作者其它作品
《The Red Saint》
Fra Balthasar rubbed his colours in the chapel of Castle Avalon, and stared complacently upon the frescoes his fingers had called into being.
A migratory friar, Fra Balthasar had come from the rich skies, the purple vineyards, the glimmering orange groves of the far south. Gossip hinted that a certain romantic indiscretion had driven him northwards over the sea. A "bend sinister" ran athwart his reputation as a priest. Men muttered that he was an infidel, a blasphemous vagabond, versed in all the damnable heresies of antiquity. Be that as it may, Fra Balthasar had come to Gilderoy on a white mule, with two servants at his back, an apt tongue to serve him, and much craft as a painter and goldsmith. He had set up a bottega at Gilderoy, and had cozened the patronage of the magnates and the merchants. Moreover, he had netted the favour of the Lord Flavian of Avalon, and was blazoning his chapel for him with the lavish fancy of a Florentine.
Fra Balthasar stood in a cataract of sunlight, that poured in through a painted window in the west. He wore the white habit of Dominic and the long black mantle. A golden mist played about his figure as he rubbed his palette, and scanned with the egotism of the artist the Pietà painted above the Lord Flavian's state stall. That gentleman, in the flesh, had established himself on a velvet hassock before the altar steps, thus flattering the friar in the part of a sympathetic patron. The Lord of Avalon had dedicated his own person to art as an Eastern King in the splendour of Gothic arms, kneeling bare-headed before the infant Christ.
Fra Balthasar was a plump man and a comely, black of eye and full of lip. His shaven chin shone blue as sleek velvet. He had turned from the Pietà towards the altar, where a triptych gleamed with massed and brilliant colour. The Virgin, a palpitating divinity breathing stars and gems from her full bosom, gazed with a face of sensuous serenity at the infant lying in her lap. She seemed to exhale an atmosphere of gold. On either wing, angels, transcendant girls in green and silver, purple and azure, scarlet and white, made the soul swim with visions of ruddy lips and milk-white hands. Their wings gleamed like opals. They looked too frail for angels, too human for heaven.
The Lord of Avalon sat on his scarlet hassock, and stared at the Madonna with some measure of awe. She was no attenuated, angular, green-faced fragment of saintliness, but by every curve a woman, from plump finger to coral lip.
You are no Byzantine, quoth the man on the hassock, with something of a sigh.
The priest glanced at him and smiled. There were curves in lip and nostril that were more than indicative of a sleek and sensuous worldliness. Fra Balthasar was much of an Antinous, and doted on the conviction.
I paint women, messire, he said.
His lordship laughed.
Divinities?
Balthasar flourished his brush.
Divine creatures, golden flowers of the world. Give me the rose to crush against my mouth, violets to burn upon my bosom. Truth, sire, consider the sparkling roundness of a woman's arm. Consider her wine-red lips, her sinful eyes, her lily fingers dropping spikenard into the soul. I confess, sire, that I am a man.
The friar's opulent extravagance of sentiment suited the litheness of his look. Balthasar had enthroned himself in his own imagination as a species of Apollo, a golden-tongued seer, whose soul soared into the glittering infinitudes of art. An immense egotist, he posed as a full-blooded divinity, palpitating to colour and to sound. He had as many moods as a vain woman, and was a mere fire-fly in the matter of honour.
Reverend sire, quoth the man on the footstool with some tightening of the upper lip, "you bulk too big for your frock, methinks."
Balthasar touched a panel with his brush; cast a glance over his shoulder, with a cynical lifting of the nostril.
My frock serves me, sire, as well as a coat of mail.
And you believe the things you paint?
The man swept a vermilion streak from his brush.
An ingenuous question, messire.
I am ever ingenuous.
A perilous habit.
Yet you have not answered me.
The friar tilted his chin like a woman eyeing herself in a mirror.
Religion is full of picturesque incidents, he said.
And is profitable.
Sire, you shame Solomon. There are ever many rich and devout fools in the world. Give me a gleaming Venus, rising ruddy from the sea, rather than a lachrymose Magdalene. But what would you? I trim my Venus up in fine apparel, put a puling infant in her lap. Ecce--Sancta Maria.
The man on the footstool smiled despite the jester's theme, a smile that had more scorn in it than sympathy.
You verge on blasphemy, he said.
There can be no blasphemy where there is no belief.
You are over subtle, my friend.
Nay, sire, I have come by that godliness of mind when man discovers his own godhead. Let your soul soar, I say, let it beat its wings into the blue of life. Hence with superstition. Shall I subordinate my mind to the prosings of a mad charlatan such as Saul of Tarsus? Shall I, like each rat in this mortal drain, believe that some god cares when I have gout in my toe, or when I am tempted to bow to Venus?
The man on the hassock grimaced, and eyed the friar much as though he had stumbled on some being from the underworld. He was a mystic for all his manhood.
God pity your creed, he said.
God, the inflated mortal----
Enough.
This man god of yours who tosses the stars like so many lemons.
Enough, sir friar.
Defend me from your mass of metaphor, your relics of barbarism. We, the wise ones, have our own hierarchy, our own Olympus.
On my soul, you are welcome to it, quoth the man by the altar.
Balthasar's hand worked viciously; he was strenuous towards his own beliefs, after the fashion of dreamers delirious with egotism. The very splendour of his infidelity took its birth from the fact that it was largely of his own creating. His pert iconoclasm pandered to his own vast self-esteem.
Tell me for what you live, said the man by the altar.
For beauty.
And the senses?
Colours, odours, sounds. To breathe, to burn, and to enjoy. To be a Greek and a god.
And life?
Is a great fresco, a pageant of passions.
The Lord of Avalon sprang up and began to pace the aisle with the air of a man whose blood is fevered. For all his devoutness and his mystical fidelity, he was in too human and passionate a mood to be invulnerable to Balthasar's sensuous shafts of fire. The Lord Flavian had come by a transcendental star-soaring spirit, an inspiration that had torched the wild beacon of romance. He was red for a riot of chivalry, a passage of desire.
Turning back towards the altar, he faced the Madonna with her choir of angel girls. Fra Balthasar was watching him with a feline sleekness of visage, and a smile that boasted something of contempt. The friar considered spirituality a species of magician's lanthorn for the cozening of fools.
What quip have you for love? said the younger man, halting by the altar rails.
Balthasar stood with poised brush.
There is some sincerity in the emotion, he said.
You are experienced?
Sire, consider my 'habit.'
The friar's mock horror was surprising, an excellent jest that fell like a blunted bolt from the steel of a vigorous manhood. The Lord Flavian ran on.
Shall I fence with an infidel? he asked.
Sire, a man may be a man without the creed of Athanasius.
How much of me do you understand?
Fra Balthasar cleared his throat.
The Lady Duessa, sire, is a rose of joy.
Monk!
My lord, it was your dictum that you are ever ingenuous. I echo you.
Need I confess to you on such a subject?
Nay, sire, you have the inconsistency of a poet.
How so?
Well, well, one can sniff rotten apples without opening the door of the cupboard.
The younger man jerked away, and went striding betwixt the array of frescoes with something of the wild vigour of a blind Polyphemus. Balthasar, subtle sophist, watched him from the angle of his eye with the sardonic superiority of one well versed in the contradictions of the world. He had scribbled a shrewd sketch of the passions stirring in his patron's heart. Had he not heard from the man's own lips of the white-faced elf of the pine woods and her vengeance? And the Lady Duessa! Fra Balthasar was as wise in the gossip of Gilderoy as any woman.
Sire, he said, as the aristocrat turned in his stride, "I ask of you a bold favour."
Speak out.
Suffer me to paint your mood in words.
The man stared, shrugged his shoulders, smiled enigmatically.
Try your craft, he said.
Balthasar began splashing in a foreground with irritable bravado.
My lord, you were a fool at twenty, were his words.
A thrice damned fool, came the echo.
Balthasar chuckled.
And now, messire, a golden chain makes a Tantalus of you. Life crawls like a sluggish river. You chafe, you strain, you rebel, feed on your own heart, sin to assert your liberty. Youth slips from you; the sky narrows about your ears. Well, well, have I not read aright?
Speak on, quoth the man by the altar.
Ah, sire, it is the old tale. They have cramped up your youth with book and ring; shut you up in a moral sarcophagus with a woman they call your wife. You burn for liberty, and the unknown that shines like a purple streak in a fading west. Ah, sire, you look for that one marvellous being, who shall torch again the youth in your heart, make your blood burn, your soul to sing. That one woman in the world, mysterious as the moon, subtle as the night, ineffably strange as a flaming dawn. That woman who shall lift you to the stars; whose lips suck the sap of the world; whose bosom breathes to the eternal swoon of all sweet sounds. She shall light the lust of battle in your heart. For her your sword shall leap, your towers totter. Chivalry should lead you like a pillar of fire out of the night, a heroic god striving for a goddess.
The Lord of Avalon stood before the high altar as one transfigured. Youth leapt in him, red, glorious, and triumphant. Balthasar's tongue had set the pyre aburning.
By God, it is the truth, he said.
The friar gathered his brushes, and took breath.
Hast thou found thy Beatrice, O my son?
Have I gazed into heaven?
Balthasar's voice filled the chapel.
Live, sire, live! he said.
Ah!
Be mad! Drink star wine, and snuff the odours of all the sunsets! Live, live! You can repent in comfort when you are sixty and measure fifty inches round the waist.
Dame Duessa had come to Avalon, having heard certain whisperings of Gilderoy, and of a golden-haired Astarte who kept house there. Dame Duessa was a proud woman and a passionate, headstrong as a reformer, jealous as a parish priest. She boasted a great ancestry and a great name, and desires and convictions in keeping. She was a woman who loved her robe cupboard, her jewel-case, and her bed. Moreover, she pretended some affection for the Lord Flavian her husband, perhaps arrogance of ownership, seeing that Dame Duessa was very determined to keep him in bonded compact with herself. She suspected that the man did not consider her a saint, or worship her as such. Yet, termagant that she was, Dame Duessa could suffer some trampling of empty sentiment, provided Fate did not rob her of her share in the broad demesne and rent-roll of Gambrevault.
Avalon was a castle of ten towers, linked by a strong curtain wall, and built about a large central court and garden. A great moat circled the whole, a moat broad and silvery as a lake, with water-lilies growing thick in the shallows. Beyond the moat, sleek meadows tufted with green rushes swept to the gnarled piers of the old oaks that vanguarded the forest. The black towers slumbered in a mist of green, girded with sheeny water, tented by the azure of a southern sky.
Dame Duessa, being a lady of silks and tissues, did not love the place with all her soul. Avalon of the Orchards was dull, and smacked of Arcady; it was far removed from that island of fair sin, Lauretia, the King's city. Moreover, the Lord Flavian and his ungallant gentlemen held rigorously to the northern turrets, leaving her to lodge ascetically in her rich chamber in a southern tower.
Her husband contrived to exile himself as far as Castle Avalon could suffer him. If the pair went to mass, they went separately, with the frigid hauteur of an Athanasius handing an Aryus over to hell. When they hunted they rode towards opposite stars. No children had chastened them, pledges of heaven-given life. The Lady Duessa detested ought that hinted at caudle, swaddling-clothes, and cradles. Moreover, all Avalon seemed in league with the Lord Flavian. Knights, esquires, scullions, horse-boys swore by him as though he were a Bayard. Dame Duessa could rely solely on a prig of a page, and a lady-in-waiting who wore a wig, and perhaps on Fra Balthasar, the Dominican.
Meanwhile, the Lord of Avalon had been putting forth his penitence in stone and timber, and an army of craftsmen from Geraint. The glade in Cambremont wood rang to the swing of axes and the hoarse groaning of the saw. The tower had been purged of its ashes, its rooms retimbered, its casements filled with glass. A chapel was springing into life under the trees; the cleverest masons of the south were at work upon its pillars and its arches. Fra Balthasar, the Dominican, held sway over the whole, subtle in colour and the carving of stone. Flavian could have found no better pander to his penitence. Rose nobles had been squandered. Frescoes, jewel bright, were to blaze out upon the walls. The vaulted roof was to be constellated with glimmering gold stars, shining from skies of purple and azure.
To turn to Fulviac's great cliff hid in the dark depths of the forest of pines. The disloyal chaff of the kingdom was wafted thither day by day, borne on the conspiring breeze. The forest engulfed all comers and delivered them like ghosts into Fulviac's caverns. An army might have melted into the wilds, and the countryside have been none the wiser. Amid the pines and rocks of the cliffs there were marchings and countermarchings, much shouldering of pikes and ordering of companies. Veterans who had fought the infidels under Wenceslaus, drilled the raw levies, and inculcated with hoarse bellowings the rudiments of military reason. They were rough gentlemen, and Fulviac stroked them with a gauntlet of iron. They were to attempt liberty together, and he demonstrated to them that such freedom could be won solely by discipline and soldierly concord. The rogues grumbled and swore behind his back, but were glad in their hearts to have a man for master.
To speak again of the girl Yeoland. That March night she had met Fulviac over the wreckage of the broken gate, and had made a profession of the truth, so far, she said, as she could conjecture it. She had been long in the forest, had returned to the cliff to find the guards slain, and the Lord Flavian gone. By some device he had escaped from his shackles, slain the men, and fled by the northern postern. The woman made a goodly pretence of vexation of spirit over the escape of this reprobate. She even taunted Fulviac with foolhardiness, and lack of foresight in so bungling her vengeance.
The man's escape from the cliff roused Fulviac's energies to full flood. The aristocrat of Avalon was ignorant of the volcano bubbling under his feet, yet any retaliatory meddling on his part might prove disastrous at so critical an hour. Fulviac thrust forward the wheels of war with a heavy hand. The torrents of sedition and discontent were converging to a river of revolt, that threatened to crush tyranny as an avalanche crushes a forest.
The Virgin with her moon-white face still inspired Yeoland with the visionary behest given in the ruined chapel. The girl's fingers toiled at the scarlet banner; she spent half her days upon her knees, devout as any Helena. She knew Fulviac's schemes as surely as she did the beads on her rosary. The rough rangers of the forest held her to be a saint, and knelt to touch her dress as she passed by.
Yet what are dreams but snowflakes drifting from the heavens, now white, now red, as God or man carries the lamp of love? The girl's ecstasy of faith was but a potion to her, dazing her from a yet more subtle dream. A faint voice summoned her from the unknown. She would hear it often in the silence of the night, or at full noon as she faltered in her prayers. The rosary would hang idle on her wrist, the crucifix melt from her vision. She would find her heart glowing like a rose at the touch of the sun. Anon, frightened, she would shake the human half of herself, and run back penitent to her prayers.
It was springtide and the year's youth, when memories are garlanded with green, and romance scatters wind-flowers over the world. Many voices awoke, like the chanting of birds, in Yeoland's heart. She desired, even as a swallow, to see the old haunts again, to go a pilgrim to the place where the dear dead slept. Was it yearning grief, or a joy more subtle, the cry of the wild and the voice of desire? Mayhap white flowers shone on the tree of life, prophetic of fruit in the mellow year. Jaspar the harper heard her plea; 'twas wilful and eager, but what of that! Fulviac, good man, had ridden to Gilderoy. The girl had liberty enough and to spare. She took it and Jaspar, and rode out from the cliff.
Threading the sables of the woods, they came one noon to the open moor. It was golden with the western sun, solitary as the sea. The shadows were long upon the sward when Cambremont wood billowed out in its valley. There was no hope of their reaching the tower before dusk, so they piled dead bracken under a cedar, where the shelving eaves swept to the ground.
They were astir early upon the morrow, a sun-chastened wind inspiring the woodlands, and sculpturing grand friezes from the marbles of the sky. The forest was full of the glory of Spring, starred with anemones and dusted with the azure campaniles of the hyacinth horde. Primroses lurked on the lush green slopes. In the glades, the forest peristyles, green gorse blazed with its constellations of gold.
To the dolt and the hag the world is nothing but a fat larder; only the unregenerate are blind of soul. Beauty, Diana-like, shows not her naked loveliness to all. The girl Yeoland's eyes were full of a strange lustre that May morning. Many familiar landmarks did she pass upon the way, notched deep on the cross of memory. There stood the great beech tree where Bertrand had carved his name, and the smooth bark still bore the scars where the knife had wantoned. She forded the stream where Roland's pony had once pitched him into the mire. Her eyes grew dim as she rode through the sun-steeped woods.
The day had drawn towards noon when they neared the glade in the midst of Cambremont wood. Heavy wain wheels had scarred the smooth green of the ride, and the newly-sawn pedestals of fallen oaks showed where woodmen had been felling timber. To Jaspar the harper these signs were more eloquent of peril than of peace. He began to snuff the air like an old hound, and to jerk restless glances at the girl at his side.
See where wheels have been, he began.
And axes, my friend.
What means it?
Some one rebuilds the tower.
The harper wagged his head and half turned his horse from the grass ride.
Have a care, he said.
Hide in the woods if you will.
She rode on with a triumphant wilfulness and he followed her.
As they neared the glade, the noise of axe and hammer floated on the wind, and they saw the scene flicker towards them betwixt the great boles of the trees. The tower stood with battlements of fresh white stone; its windows had been reset, the blasting touch of fire effaced from the walls. The glade was strewn with blocks of stone and lengths of timber; the walls of a chapel were rising from the grass. Men were digging trenches for the foundations of the priest's cell. Soldiers idled about gossiping with the masons.
There was a smile in the girl's eyes and a deeper tint upon her cheeks as she stared betwixt the trees at the regarnished tower. Those grey eyes had promised the truth in Fulviac's cavern. She was glad in her heart of the man's honour, glad with a magic that made her colour. As for the harper, he stroked his grey beard and was mute. He lacked imagination, and was no longer young.
On a stump of an oak tree at the edge of the wood sat a man in a black mantle and a habit of white cloth. He had a panel upon his knee, and a small wooden chest beside him on the grass. His eyes were turned often to the rolling woods, as his plump hand flourished a brush with nervous and graceful gestures.
Seeing the man's tonsure, and his dress that marked him a Dominican, Yeoland rode out from the trees, casting her horse's shadow athwart his work. The man looked up with puckered brow, his keen eye framing the girl's figure at a glance. It was his destiny to see the romantic and the beautiful in all things.
The priest and the girl on the horse eyed each other a moment in silence. Each was instinctively examining the other. The churchman, with an approving glint of the eye, was the first to break the woodland silence.
Peace be with you, madame.
His tone hinted at a question, and the girl adopted therewith an ingenuous duplicity.
My man and I were of a hunting party, she said; "we went astray in the wood. You, Father, will guide us?"
Madame has not discovered to me her desire.
We wish for Gilderoy.
Balthasar rose and pointed with his brush towards the ride by which they had come. He mapped the road for them with sundry jaunty flourishes, and much showing of his white teeth. Yeoland thanked him, but was still curious.
Ah, Father, whither have we wandered?
Men call it Cambremont wood, madame.
And these buildings? A retreat, doubtless, for holy men.
Balthasar corrected her with much unction.
The Lord Flavian of Avalon builds here, he said, "but not for monks. I, madame, am his architect, his pedagogue in painting."
Yeoland pretended interest. She craned forward over her horse's neck and looked at the priest's panel. The act decided him. Since she was young and comely, Balthasar seized the chance of a chivalrous service. The girl had fine eyes, and a neck worthy of a Venus.
Madame has taste. She would see our work?
Madame appeared very ready to grant the favour. Balthasar put his brushes aside, held the girl's stirrup, and, unconscious of the irony of the act, expatiated to Yeoland on the beauties of her own home. At the end of their pilgrimage, being not a little bewitched by such eyes and such a face, he begged of her the liberty of painting her there and then. 'Twas for the enriching of religious art, as he very properly put it.
Dead Rual's grave was not ten paces distant, and Jaspar was standing by it as in prayer. Thus, Yeoland sat to Fra Balthasar, oblivious of him indeed as his fingers brought her fair face into being, her shapely throat and raven hair. His picture perfected, he blessed her with the unction of a bishop, and stood watching her as she vanished down the southern ride, graceful and immaculate as a young Dian.
Hardly had an hour passed, and Fra Balthasar was still touching the study he had made of Yeoland's face, when a company of spears flashed out by the northern ride into the clearing. At their head rode a knight in harness of burnished steel, a splendid figure flashing chivalry in the eyes of the sun. On his shield he bore "a castle, argent, with ports voided of the field, on a field vert," the arms of the house of Gambrevault. His surcoat was diapered azure and green with three gold suns blazoned thereon. His baldric, a splendid streak of scarlet silk, slashed his surcoat as with blood. His troop, men in half armour, rode under the Pavon Vert of the demesne of Avalon.
They thundered into the open stretch of grass with a clangorous rattle of steel. Flavian, bare-headed, for his salade hung at his saddle-bow and he wore no camail, scanned the glade with a keen stare. Seeing Fra Balthasar seated under a tree, he turned his horse towards him, and smiled as the churchman put his tools aside and gave him a benediction. The man made a fine figure; judged by the flesh, Balthasar might have stood for an Ambrose or a Leo.
Herald of heaven, how goes the work?
Sire, we emulate Pericles.
What have you there, a woman's head, some rare Madonna?
Balthasar showed his white teeth.
A pretty pastoral, messire. The study of a lady who had lost her way hunting, and craved my guidance this morning. A woman with the face and figure of a Dian.
Ha, rogue of the brush, let us see it.
Balthasar passed the parchment into the other's hand. Flavian stared at it, flushed to the temples, rapped out an ejaculation in ecclesiastic Latin. His eyes devoured the sketch with the insatiable enthusiasm of a lover; words came hot off his tongue.
Quick, man, quick, is this true to life?
As ruby to ruby.
None of your idealisations?
Messire, but an hour ago that girl was sitting her horse where your destrier now stands.
And you sketched this at her desire?
At my own, sire; it was courtesy for courtesy: I had shown her our handiwork here.
You showed her this tower and chapel?
Certainly, sire.
She seemed sad?
Nay, merry.
This is romance! He lifted the little picture at arm's length to the sun, kissed it, and put it in his bosom. His face was radiant; he laughed as though some golden joy rang and resounded in his heart.
A hundred golden angels for this face!
Fra Balthasar was in great measure mystified. The Lord of Avalon seemed an inflammable gentleman.
Messire, you are ever generous.
Man, man, you have caught the one woman in the world.
Sire----
The Madonna of the Pine Forest, the Madonna of Mercy; she whose kinsfolk were put to the sword by my men; even the daughter of Rual whose tower stands yonder.
The priest comprehended the whole in a moment. The dramatic quaintness of the adventure had made him echo Flavian's humour. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
Romance, romance! By all the lovers who ever loved, by Tristan and the dark Iseult, by Launcelot and Guinivere, follow that picture.
Which way went she?
By the southern ride, towards Gilderoy.
The man was in heroic humour; his sword flashed out and shook in the sun.
By God, I'll see her face again, and yet again, though I burn in hell for it. Roland, Godamar, come, men, come, throw away your spears. Ride, ride, we chase the sunset. Life and desire!
He sprang away on his great bay horse, a shimmering shaft of youth--youth that flashed forth chivalry into the burgeoning green of Spring. The sunlight webbed his hair with gold; his face glowed like a martyr's. Balthasar watched him with much poetic zest, as he swept away with his thundering knights into the woods.
The friar settled to his work again, but it was fated that he was to have no lasting peace that morning. He was painting in a background, a landscape, to a small Crucifixion. His hand was out of touch, however; the subject was not congenial. A pale face and a pair of dusky eyes had deepened a different stream of thought in the man. Themes hypersensuous held his allegiance; from prim catholic ethics, he reverted to his glorious paganism with an ever-broadening sense of satisfaction.
He was interrupted once more, and not unpleasantly, by a lady, with two armed servants at her back, riding in from the forest by the northern ride. The woman was clad in a cloak of damask red, and a jupon of dark green, broidered with azure scroll work. Her hood, fallen back, showed her purple black hair bound up in a net of gold. Her large dark eyes flashed and smouldered under their long lashes. She had high cheek-bones, a big nose, lips full as an over-ripe rose. She was big of body, voluptuous to look upon, as an Eastern odalisque, a woman of great passions, great appetites.
Fra Balthasar tumbled his brushes and paints aside, and went to meet her as she rode over the grass. There was a smile on the man's lips, a flush upon his sleek face, as he walked with a courtly and debonair vanity. The woman caught sight of him and wheeled her horse in his direction. The autumn splendour of her cheeks told of hard riding, and her horse dropped foam from his black muzzle.
Fra Balthasar crossed himself with much meekness.
Good greeting, Madame Duessa, were his words, as he kept his eyes on the ground.
The woman scanned the glade with the strenuous spirit of a Boadicea.
My Lord Flavian?
Madame?
He has been here.
But is here no longer.
These buildings?
Are the Lord Flavian's.
And you?
I am his architect.
Morally, messire monk?
Madame, I do not edificate souls.
The woman stared him over with a critical comprehensiveness.
Balthasar.
The man half glanced at her.
Look me in the face.
He gave a sigh, made a gesture with his hands, looked melancholy and over-ecstasied to the point of despair.
Madame, there are thoughts beyond one's liberty.
Well?
There are women, a woman, one dares not look upon. There are eyes, well--well, that are too bright. Pardon me, I would serve you.
She took a deep breath, held out her hand to him, a big, warm hand, soft and white. The man's lips burnt upon it. She touched his cheek and saw him colour.
Well?
My Lord Flavian is not here.
But has been. Where now?
Away hunting.
Ha, what?
Madame, what do men hunt and burn for?
Sometimes a stag, a hare, a standard, a woman.
Sometimes--a woman.
Balthasar, looking slantwise under half-closed lids, saw her eyes flash and her lips tighten.
Which way?
The southern ride, towards Gilderoy.
Duessa shook her bridle, and threw one look into Balthasar's eyes.
Remember, she said, "remember, a woman loves a friend, a true friend, who can tell a lie, or keep a secret."
Balthasar watched her ride away. He stood and smiled to himself, while his long fingers played with the folds of his mantle. Red wine was bounding in his blood, and his imagination revelled. He was a poetic person, and a poet's soul is often like tinder, safe enough till the spark falls.
Gloria, he said to himself with a smirk, "here's hunting with a vengeance. Two women and a man! The devil is loose. Soul of Masaccio, that woman has fine eyes."
That day, when the sky was growing red over the woods, Flavian and his troop drew close on the heels of Yeoland and the harper. The man, for all his heat, had kept his horse-flesh well in hand. Once out of Cambremont wood, they had met a charcoal-burner, who had seen Yeoland and her follower pass towards the west. They had hunted fast over fell and moor. While not two miles behind came Duessa of the Black Hair, biting her lips and giving her brute lash and spur with a woman's viciousness.
Yeoland, halting on a slope above the pine woods, looked back and saw something that made her crane her neck and wax vigilant. Out of the wine-red east and the twilight gloom came the lightning of harness, the galloping gleam of armed men. Jaspar's blear eyes were unequal to the girl's. The men below were riding hard, half under the lea of the midnight pines, whose tops touched the sunset. A half-moon of steel, their crescent closed wood and moor. They had the lead in the west; they were mounting the slope behind.
Jaspar saw them at last. He was for galloping. Yeoland held him in.
Fool, we are caught. Sit still. We shall gain nothing by bolting.
A knight was coming up the slope at a canter. Yeoland saw his shield, read it and his name. She went red under her hood, felt her heart beating, wondered at its noise.
Youth, aglitter in arms, splendid, triumphant! A face bare to the west, eyes radiant and tender, a great horse reined in on its haunches, a mailed hand that made the sign of the cross!
Madame, your pardon.
He drew Balthasar's picture from his bosom and held it before her eyes.
My torch, he said, "that led me to see your face again."
The girl was silent. Her head was thrown back, her slim throat showing, her face turned heavenwards like the face of a woman who is kissed upon the lips.
You have seen your home?
Yes, messire.
God pardon me your sorrow. You see I am no hypocrite. I keep my vows.
Yes, messire.
Madame, let me be forgiven; you have trusted one man, trust another.
She turned her horse suddenly and began to ride towards the black maw of the forest. Her lips were tightly closed, and she looked neither to the right nor the left. Flavian, a tower of steel, was at her side. Armed men ranged in a circle about them. They opened ranks at a sign from their lord, and gave the woman passage.
Madame----
Messire----
Am I to be forgiven?
She was mute a moment, as in thought. Then she spoke quietly enough.
Yes, for a vow.
Tell it me.
If you will never see my face again.
He looked at her with a great smile, drew his sword, and held the point towards her.
Then give me hate.
Messire!
Hate, not forgiveness, hate, utter and divine, that I may fight and travail, labour and despair.
Messire!
Hate me, hate me, with all the unreason of your heart. Hate me a hundred times, that I may but leap a hundred times into your life. Bar me out that I may storm your battlements again and again.
Are you a fool?
A glorious, mad, inspired fool.
They were quite near the trees. Their black masses threw a great shadow over the pair. Higher still the sky burnt.
Madame, whither do you go?
Where you may not venture, messire.
God, I know no such region.
She flashed round on him with sudden bitterness.
Go back to your wife. Go back to your wife, messire; remember her honour.
It was a home-thrust, but it did not shame or weaken him. He sheathed his sword, and looked at her sadly out of his grey eyes.
What a world is this, he said, "when heaven comes at last, hell yawns across the path. When summer burns, winter lifts its head. Even as a man would grow strong and pure, his own cursed shackles cumber 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.
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 cumbered, 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. Damnation, 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? God's blood, there is nothing to erase.
Ha!
We have no children.
Go on.
I shall send gold and an embassage 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 God, messire.
By God, woman, am I going down to hell 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.
该作者其它作品
《The Red Saint》
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 passions. 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 God.
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 grassy 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 superstitious veneration for the dead.
She had wandered here one day and had settled herself on the grassy 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 grass 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.
It was the face of the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault.
The girl stood and stared at him with unstinted astonishment.
You, she said, "you?"
Madame, I said that you should see my face again.
She conceived a sudden impetuous desire to turn and leave him on his knees, but some inner potency of instinct restrained her. She looked down at the man, with no kindling kindness upon her face. She did not know what to say to him, how to tune her mood. The first thought that rushed into her mind was seized upon and pressed into service, discretion or no discretion.
Madman, they will kill you if they find you here.
No woman ever loved a coward.
For Heaven's sake, go away.
He rose from his knees and lifted up his frock. The girl saw harness and a sword beneath it. This young leopard of the southern shores had fettle enough, and spirit. He was a mixture of imperturbable determination and sanguine Quixotism, as he faced her under the trees.
This dress is privileged; my bell warns folk away; who would fall foul of a miserable leper? If this frock fails me, I have my sword.
She looked at him with the solemnity of a child, hand folded in hand.
I cannot understand you, she said.
Not yet.
Are you the man whose life I saved? That breath of death on your brow, messire, should have made you thoughtful of your soul.
Let me plead a moment.
For what?
My honour.
Why your honour?
Because I want you to believe that I have a soul.
He was vastly earnest, and his eyes followed her, as though she were some being out of heaven. She had never seen such a look in a man's eyes before; it troubled her. She questioned her own heart, laughed emptily, and gave in to him.
We are both mad, she said, "but go on. I will listen for one minute. Keep watch lest any one should come upon us suddenly."
She sat down on the grass bank, while he stood before her, holding his lazar bell by the clapper.
Look at this dress, he said.
Yes?
It is how I feel in soul when I look at you.
She frowned visibly.
If you wax personal, messire, I shall leave you.
No, no, I will keep to my own carcase, and play the egotist. Well, I will be brief. Look at me, I am the first lord in the south, master of an army, one of the twelve knights of the Order of the Rose.
Go on.
When I was twenty years old, certain clever people found me a wife, a woman five years my senior in time, twenty years my superior in knowledge of the world. Well, six months had not passed before I hated her, hated her with my whole soul. My God, what a thing for a boy to begin life with a woman who made him half the bounden vassal of the devil!
You seem generous. The faults were all on her side.
Madame, I say nothing against the woman, only that she had no soul. We were incompatible as day and night, fire and water. The thing crushed the youth out of me, made me desperate, and worse, made me old beyond my years. I have done my best. I have groped along like a man in the dark, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, save that I had a warm heart in me, and that life seemed one grim jest. The future had no fire for me; I drank the wine of the present, strove to please my senses, plunged into the abysses of the world. Sometimes I tried to pray. Sometimes I played the cynic. The eternal beacon of love had gone out of my life. I had no sun, no inspiration for my soul.
She sprang up suddenly, breathing fast like one who is near tears.
Why do you speak to me of this?
God knows.
His voice was utterly lonely.
What am I to you? You have hardly seen me three hours in your life. Why do you speak to me of this?
He put a hand to his throat, and did not look at her.
Madame, there are people who come near our hearts in one short hour, people who are winter to us to eternity. Do not ask me to explain this truth; as Christ's death, I know it to be true. I trust you. All the logicians of the world could not tell me why. I do not know that I could bring forward one single reason out of my own soul, save that you showed me great mercy once. And now--and now----
He broke down suddenly, and could not speak. Yeoland appealed to him out of the quickness of her fear.
Messire, messire, your promise.
Let me speak, or I stifle.
Go, for God's sake, go!
He flung his hands towards her with a great outburst of passion.
Heaven and God's throne, you shall hear me to the end. Woman, woman, my soul flows to you as the sea ebbs to the moon; deep in the sky a new sun burns; the stars are dust, dust blown from the coffins of the dead who loved. Life leaps in me like another chaos. All my heart glows like an autumn orchard, and I burn. The world is red with a myriad roses. God's in the heaven, Christ bleeds on quaking Calvary.
She ran to him suddenly and seized his wrist.
GO----!
I cannot.
Men are coming, I hear them in the woods, they will kill you!
I hear them too.
Go, go, for my sake and for God's.
He kissed her sleeve, pulled his cowl down, and fled away into the woods.