“Dawn,” he said; “how long have I slept? Are we nearer Holy Guard and the sea?”
“The men have rowed all night,” she answered him. “You have slept, Tristan, while we have watched.”
A strange smile played upon the man’s lips, the smile of one who remembered a dream, some shining forth of a mystic face from the shifting vapours of the night.
“I have dreamed a dream,” he said.
“Yes, Tristan,” she echoed.
“Methinks that I shall reach the sea and live to be carried into Holy Guard. Hark, whose voice is that? The steersman calls to us from the poop.”
One of Blanche’s men who steered the barge was pointing to where the tall woods were broken by a valley. Under a thick mist they could see the shining through of a goodly river, streaked and silvered by the sun. Its waters came fretting round a rocky point to merge into the bosom of the Gloire.
“It is the Lorient,” quoth Blanche, standing and looking under her hand.
Tristan half raised himself upon his elbow and gazed over the low bulwarks towards the woods. A tawny flood came flashing down to smite into the Gloire’s more silver breadth.
“The Lorient,” he said; “then we are but ten leagues from the sea.”
“By nightfall we should come to Holy Guard.”
He sank back again upon the bed with a spasmodic catching of the breath as the barb twinged in his wounded side. Fresh blood stained the linen bands. He coughed and winced as Blanche knelt by him and gave him wine out of an earthen flask.
“Courage, Tristan, courage,” she said; “for by God’s grace we shall bring you to Holy Guard before the night shall come again.”
So the day passed, and the great Gloire coursed on with broadening grandeur towards the sea. The silent thickets clambered down to where the glittering inlets played on sandy banks and amid the sedges. Ever the meadows lay between, streaked with green rushes and with golden flags, while the sky seemed full of thunder clouds, of light and shadow, and of shimmering mists that wreathed the hills with golden smoke. Ever the great trees seemed to sing of death as the barge swept on towards the sea.
CHAPTER XLVII
It was sunset at Holy Guard, and a strong wind blew from over the sea, where the tide was low, and the sands were purpled with the shadows of the clouds. The breakers were white on the distant rocks and about the black islands scattered there upon the bosom of the sea.
Ruin possessed Holy Guard, for Jocelyn’s men had laboured hard to fulfil the commands of the mighty Pelinore. Thus in the old days the Church knew well how to use the saints she herself had created. She could conjure with many a magic name and frighten the froward with the shades of the dead. Such prelates as Jocelyn could cheat their own creed with a cunning that claimed Heaven, though born of the Devil.
The chapel roof of Holy Guard had fallen in on the broken pillars and the grass-grown floor. The frescoes rotted on the walls, and through the empty casement frames shone vistas of sea and sky and wood. The wild voice of the wind played through the abbey, the red fires of the sunset glimmered in, and moonlight pierced the broken roof. Bats and sea-birds haunted the shadows ’mid the creaking and clashing of the doors and the hoarse roar of the waves beneath.
At a ruined window in the Abbess’s room stood Rosamunde of Joyous Vale looking out towards the night. Telamon and his men were quartered below in the bare refectory and the empty cells. On a rough stool in the midst of the room sat the girl Miriam, whom Tristan had saved with Rosamunde from the madhouse in the mere.
The Lady of Joyous Vale leant against the stone sill with her face resting betwixt her hands. There was but little light in her shadowy eyes, and her shoulders drooped from the fair sweep of her neck, as though she were weary, and had known no sleep. She stood there motionless, like one whose thoughts sped far away over the dim horizon into the distant land of dreams.
The girl Miriam watched her lady, crooning to herself some ancient song with a faint smile on her full red lips. She was not unhappy, this Hebrew child, though she wondered, as she sat there, what had passed betwixt the woman who brooded by the window and Tristan who had gone to the mountainous south. That Rosamunde was sorrowful she knew full well, since her sorrow spoke on her wistful face.
From below came the sound of a man singing the staunch lines of some old song forged in the smithies of the north. The girl Miriam smiled, and pressed one hand over the charm that hung over her heart. Rosamunde seemed to droop the more as she bowed down her head towards the night.
Miriam rose from her stool, went to Rosamunde, and touched her shoulder.
“What ails you?” she said. “May I not help?”
“It is nothing, child,” came the dull response.
“Are you ill, lady, in body or in heart?”
“Why question me, girl, when I have no answer?”
Both Miriam’s hands were on Rosamunde’s arm, and her eyes were very gentle under her dusky hair.
“Am I but a child, then?” she asked.
“Well?”
“Have I not suffered, am I not wise in a woman’s way? Ah, my lady, let me in. We have shared much together; trust me further.”
Very slowly Rosamunde took her hands from her face, and turned and looked into Miriam’s eyes. No vulgar curiosity did she find therein, no insolent challenging of the truth. The girl’s face seemed softened by pity, yet not that pert patronage that affronts the soul.
“Child,” she said sadly, turning again towards the east, “how easily are we women fooled by pride, driven to cheat our nobler self by the mad anguish of a passionate moment. Would to God I had had less pride!”
Miriam drew to her with her lithe, warm body, as though her very nearness should speak of sympathy.
“Lady,” she said, “we women err according to the fierceness of our instincts. Love turns to lightning in a moment; or, like the moon, we frown at a cloud that dulls for an instant the distant stars.”
“True, true,” said Rosamunde, gazing towards the woods. “Words wound us too easily when we dote on words and behold not the truth that shines beneath. We cannot always bear the truth when that same truth wounds our desire. So we rebel, even as a good hound will turn when stung by the lash in a master’s hand.”
“And yet it is not love that turns.”
“No, but the quick instinct of a passionate heart that snaps at destiny, to repent betimes. For when the pain is quick and keen, the finer reason slacks the lead, and the hot self leaps out on love, only to slink when the wrath is past.”
She leant her chin once more upon her hands and watched the azure deepen in the east, with the vain anguish of her penitence. Was it but a week since she had come from Agravale to the sea, stirred by the unreasoning fever of her wrath? Yet day by day her heart had cooled, till naught seemed left in it but slow despair. “Tristan, Tristan!” cried her soul. Often she would thrust her arms out in the night, and pray that Tristan might return once more.
Even as she stood there, gazing over the hills and woods where the river wound down towards the sea, she saw a black shape glide from the trees over the broadening bosom of the Gloire. She saw oars flash and glisten against the setting sun. Right in the golden path came a barge, bearing for Holy Guard across the river.
Rosamunde stood back and watched the boat with both hands folded over her heart. Then without a word she sprang away, sped down the galleries in the dusk, where many a shaft of gold smote through the narrow windows in the walls. Out through the ruined gate she sped, and down the rough path towards the river.
Nor was she so speedy that she reached the river before the barge had foamed up to the strand, where a narrow waterway wound to a wooden quay. Rosamunde, halting under a wind-twisted fir, saw four soldiers moving up the path, bearing upon a bed the figure of a man. Before them, some twenty paces, walked a woman whose face was turned towards the walls of Holy Guard. Rosamunde knew her as she climbed the path, Blanche of the North, even the Duchess.
The two women met
on the narrow path that climbed the wild hillside from the waters of the Gloire. A great glory covered the sea, while the dark woods seemed steeped in shadow, as though the trees had drawn black cowls over their green polls. From the west came the hoarse murmur of the waves, as they foamed in over the yellow sand.
Blanche held out her hands to Rosamunde.
“Sister,” she said, “I bring you back Tristan from the mountains.”
As for Rosamunde, she was white as death, nor had she words wherewith to answer the Duchess. Going to the litter, she saw Tristan lying there with a grey face and great shadows under his sunken eyes. So weak was he that he could but stretch a hand to her as she drew near and touched his forehead with her lips.
“Rosamunde,” he said, with a great sigh.
Her hot tears fell upon his face, as she wept there, even before the men who bore him.
“Tristan, look not thus at me,” she said, “for I have been shamed out of all my pride.”
They passed on up the bare hillside with the moss-grown rocks lit by the setting sun. The perfume of the myrtle thickets scented the air, tossed abroad by the wild west wind. Over the sands rolled the rising tide, flowing fast under the flaming sky.
Thus they brought Tristan towards Holy Guard, its black walls haloed by the west. Rosamunde walked beside the bed with Tristan’s hand clasped fast in hers. The Duchess Blanche had drawn apart, a deep calm on her stately face, an unfathomable sadness filling her eyes. She had surrendered love into Rosamunde’s hands, and would fain be alone to hide the smart.
They carried Tristan through the gate, up the great stairway, and through the dim galleries into the chamber of the Abbess. There they left Rosamunde and the man alone, for Blanche would suffer none to meddle in the sacred meeting of the twain. She closed the door on them with her own hands, and passed out to the battlements to watch the sea drown the darkening sands.
In the twilight of the room Rosamunde knelt by Tristan’s bed, and bowed down her face over him as one who mourned. Through many a window the west wind moaned, and death seemed to move through the ruined house. In Rosamunde’s eyes there was a strange despair, for she had read the truth at the first glance, and her heart cried out in her as the night came down.
“Ah, Tristan,” she said, with her pride in the dust, “I have sinned against you and your love. Ah, God, must I lose all at this hour!”
“Grieve not,” he answered her, “for what is past. Fate has ever bruised our hearts; and though I die, I have love in death.”
There was a great light within his eyes, but Rosamunde’s face was hid in shadow. Not for her was the empty boast of love, the last triumph-cry of a wounded soul. She broke out suddenly into bitter weeping, and hung over Tristan as she wept.
“Love,” she said, with her words half smothered and her hair falling upon his face, “how can I lose you out of my life? O God, have pity! Is it for this that I have passed through all? Tristan, Tristan, is it death?”
Very tenderly he held her hands, and strove to comfort her as the night increased.
“It is God’s will,” he said at last. “I have fought my fight, and the end is near. And yet I shall not win the spoil, for death steps in—thus ends the day.”
“God is not merciful,” she cried, “to those who grieve and sorrow here.”
He drew her down to him, so that his face was wreathed in the glory of her hair.
“Let us not judge,” he said, “those things which ever balk our ken. Are we not children? Wife, take courage.”
She clung to him, and kissed his lips, as though to shut the warm life in.
“Ah, Tristan, Tristan, that I also might die!”
CHAPTER XLVIII
A night and a day had passed, and Tristan lived on, though the blood still flowed from his wounded side. Blanche and Rosamunde had dressed the wound with oil and wine and diverse herbs, but the barb would suffer no healing there, and the red stream still ebbed slowly forth. They saw that Tristan weakened hour by hour, his great hands growing white as a young girl’s, his eyes shining like crystal in a mask of wax.
Rosamunde watched at his side, counting the hours by the dial of her heart, neither sleeping nor leaving him long alone. As she saw him weakening with his wound, the fiercer mood returned to her heart as though to defy the power of death. It was not against Tristan that it arose, this passionate anger that strove with Fate. To the man she was mild and tender as moonlight, gentle towards him as the hours sped by. Against God it was that her heart cried out, against the God who would not hear her prayers.
When the second evening came, with the night’s fatalism deepening in the east, she passed out from the room like one whose heart could bear up no longer against despair. It was not to weep that she sped away and climbed to the topmost wall of Holy Guard. Nor was it for prayer in the gentler sense, but rather to fling her burning wrongs full in the countenance of the heavens.
The sun was setting over the sea like some great slave of the Creator, doomed to tread an eternal track amid the planets of the sky. The clouds, like demons, scourged him on, breathing forth fire and purple smoke. Beneath on the rocks the sea complained, that mighty rhapsodist whose words declared the troubled destinies of all mankind. For as the wind is often hushed, luring the ocean into sleep, so doubt and anguish cease at times, only to mock mankind the more.
So it was with Rosamunde that summer night as she stood alone on the wind-swept walls and watched the sun go down in flame. All hope had ebbed from her, and her pure faith had, like an angel, spread its wings, and vanished into the distant gloom. The sky seemed but an iron dome, riveted above the helpless world. All eloquence had passed away with the unfathomable truths of life that sometimes vivify and sometimes kill.
What had life given her? Insult and pain, death, terror, and unanswered prayers! Had not her beauty been a curse? What single blessing had she won but the strong love of a strong man’s heart, one fierce melody in the strifes of sound! And now this one good gift seemed gone, snatched like a jewel from her breast by the lean hand of a mocking fate.
In great bitterness she thrust up her arms and cried aloud under the sky:
“God, if there be a God, hear my voice. Give me some sign that I may know that we are not brute beasts who live to beget life, then—to die. Give me some sign of immortality. Show me that wisdom rules the heavens, that we of earth are not dust and air.”
And still the sun approached the sea, and still the hoarse waves laughed below as though there were no hope in heaven.
“Great God,” she cried again, her hands outstretched towards the west, “give me but one word in my heart, that I may know there is a God, and that some kindness rules the world.”
Yet there was no still small voice as that which spoke to the prophet in the cave when all the discords of the earth moved him to doubt in God’s design. The sea and sky were full of life, the wild woods clamoured and the west wind blew. And yet there shone no light in heaven to comfort her whose faith was dim.
Slowly, with her head adroop, Rosamunde passed back to the Abbess’s room, and stole in silently, to find Tristan asleep. A small lamp burnt on a sconce in the wall, shedding a vague light on the sleeping man’s face. Rosamunde, with the look of one very weary, drew a great wooden chair that had been the Abbess’s towards the bed, lay back therein, and rested her chin upon her hand.
The night had fallen about Holy Guard, filling its broken galleries with gloom. The stars were shining, and from below came the voices of those who sat at meat in the abbey refectory with Blanche the Duchess. It was Rosamunde’s vigil, and no one disturbed her, for she had wine and bread with her in the room.
Once more the heat of her despair died down like a fire that lacks for fuel. Her very soul seemed weary to death, and very lonely in that silent room. A hundred dark thoughts coursed through her brain: the sure knowledge that Tristan would die, that God had deserted her, if there were a God. Apathy possessed her hour by hour; afar she heard the sound of the sea, and th
e wind in the windows overhead.
As the hours passed her eyes grew hot and heavy with sleep; the long night began to weigh her down, as Tristan slept on and took no heed. Soon her head sank upon her shoulder, the very gloom seemed to grow more dim, and the noise of the wind ebbed from her ears. She drooped down in the great chair, her hands lying open in her lap, her hair clouding over her face. Sleep wiped the tired lines away from her mouth, and her large eyes strained towards the lamp no more.
That night Rosamunde dreamed a dream, a mystic vision, as though the God who watches over the ways of men had sent some seraph to His child. It seemed to her that she stood alone within the ruined chapel upon the rock. The chapel was full of golden vapour, a magic mist that seemed to move in luminous whorls towards the roof. The high altar was hid in gloom, as though a cloud enveloped it, like purple smoke over the moon. Even as she stood gazing in silent awe, a white arm was thrust from out the cloud, pointing its finger towards the floor that lay below the altar steps. A golden ray seemed to fall from the hand upon a stone a full cubit square. Letters of fire were traced on the flag. The purple vapour was rent aside, and in that dream shrine Rosamunde saw the White Christ bending from the Cross.
“Believe,” the Christ’s eyes seemed to say.
Then, with a sudden stream of light and a great sound as of a thunder-clap, the whole chapel rocked and sank into an abyss that had no ending.
With a cry Rosamunde awoke and stared around her in the room. Trembling, she sat up in the chair, awe and fear upon her face, as she remembered the vision she had seen. Tristan was still sleeping on the bed, and the great abbey was silent as death, save that she heard the sound of the sea.
Trembling and amazed, Rosamunde rose up like one whose soul groped in the dark towards the truth. She passed her hand over her heavy eyes, looked at Tristan as he slept close by the window where the night streamed in. Stung by sudden hope, she crossed the room, took the lamp from the sconce in the wall, passed out, and climbed towards the chapel. Up the great stair she made her way, the lamplight flashing on the walls and into her white palm as she shaded the flame. The wind played round her from above, moving her hair about her face. Her eyes were filled with hope and fear, like pools where darkness and moonlight mingle.
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