Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  Produced by Al Haines.

  Cover]

  "FLAVIAN OF GAMBREVAULT STOOD BOUND BEFORE HER."]

  LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

  BY WARWICK DEEPING

  AUTHOR OF "UTHER AND IGRAINE"

  Grim work, sirs; what would you! War is the devil.

  _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. BENDA_

  New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1904

  _All rights reserved_

  COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1904.

  Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. -- Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

  TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER WITH ALL LOVE AND GRATITUDE

  PART I

  I

  The branches of the forest invoked the sky with the supplications oftheir thousand hands. Black, tumultuous, terrible, the wilds billowedunder the moon, stifled with the night, silent as a windless sea.Winter, like a pale Semiramis of gigantic mould, stood with her coronettouching the steely sky. A mighty company of stars stared frost-brightfrom the heavens.

  A pillar of fire shone red amid the chaos of the woods. Like a greattorch, a blazing tower hurled spears of light into the gloom. Shadows,vast and fantastic, struggled like Titans striving with Destiny in thesilence of the night. Their substanceless limbs leapt and writhedthrough the gnarled alleys of the forest. Overhead, the moon lookeddown with thin and silver lethargy on the havoc kindled by the hand ofman.

  In a glade, all golden with the breath of the fire, blackenedbattlements waved a pennon of vermilion flame above the woods. Smoke,in eddying and gilded clouds, rolled heavenwards to be silvered intosnow by the light of the moon. The grass of the glade shone a dusky,yet brilliant green; the tower's windows were red as rubies on a pall ofsables. About its base, cottages were burning like faggots piled abouta martyr's loins.

  Tragedy had touched the place with her ruddy hand. There had been savagedeeds done in the silence of the woods. Hirelings, a rough pack ofmercenaries in the service of the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, hadstolen upon the tower of Rual of Cambremont, slain him before his owngate, and put his sons to the sword. A feud had inspired the event, arotten shred of enmity woven on Stephen's Eve in a tavern scuffle. Theburning tower with its cracking walls bore witness to the extravagantmalice of a rugged age.

  Death, that flinty summoner, salves but the dead, yet wounds the living.It is sport with him to pile woe upon the shoulders of the weak, tocrown with thorns the brows of those who mourn. Double-handed are hisblessings--a balm for those who sleep, an iron scourge for the living.The quick bow down before his feet; only the dead fear him no more inthe marble philosophy of silence.

  On a patch of grass within the golden whirl of the fire lay the body ofRual of Cambremont, stiff and still. His face was turned to the heavens;his white beard tinctured with the dye of death. Beside him knelt agirl whose unloosed hair trailed on his body, dark and disastrous as asable cloud. The girl's eyes were tearless, dry and dim. Her handswere at her throat, clenched in an ecstasy of despair. Her head wasbowed down below her stooping shoulders, and she knelt like Thea overSaturn's shame.

  Behind her in the shadow, his face grey in the uncertain gloom, an oldman watched the scene with a wordless awe. He was a servant, thin andmeagre, bowed under Time's burden, a dried wisp of manhood, livingsymbol of decay. There was something of the dog about his look, a dumbloyalty that grieved and gave no sound. Beneath the burning tower inthe heat of the flames, these twain seemed to mimic the stillness of thedead.

  There was other life in the glade none the less, a red relic evidencingthe handiwork of the sword. A streak of shadow that had lain motionlessin the yellow glare of the fire, stirred in the rank grass with asnuffling groan. There was a curt hint in the sound that brought Jasparthe harper round upon his heel. He moved two steps, went down on hisknees in the ooze, turned the man's head towards the tower, and peeredinto his face. It was gashed from chin to brow, a grim mask of war,contorted the more by the uncertain palpitations of the flames.

  Jaspar had a flask buckled at his girdle. He thrust his knee under theman's head, trickled wine between his lips, and waited. The limp handsbegan to twitch; the man jerked, drew a wet, stertorous breath, staredfor a moment with flickering lids at the face above him. Jaspar craneddown, put his mouth to the man's ear, and spoke to him.

  The fellow's lips quivered; he stirred a little, strove to lift hishead, mumbled thickly like a man with a palsied tongue. Jaspar put hisear to the bruised mouth and listened. He won words out of the grave,for his rough face hardened, his brows were knotted over the dying man'sstumbling syllables. The harper shouted in his ear, and again waited.

  "Gam--Gambrevault, Flavian's men, dead, all dead," ran the deathutterance. "Ave Maria, my lips burn--St. Eulalie--St. Jude, defendme----"

  A cough snapped the halting appeal. The man stiffened suddenly inJaspar's arms, and thrust out his feet with a strong spasm. His handsclawed the grass; his jaw fell, leaving his mouth agape, a black circleof death. There was a last rattling stridor. Then the head fell backover Jaspar's knee with the neck extended, the eyes wide with avisionless stare.

  A shadow fell athwart the dead man and the living, a shadow edged withthe golden web of the fire. Looking up, Jaspar the harper saw the girlstanding above him, staring down upon the dead man's body. The redtower framed her figure with flame, making an ebon cloud of her hair,her body a pillar of sombre stone. Her face was grey, pinched, andexpressionless. Youth seemed frozen for the moment into bleak andpremature age.

  She bowed down suddenly, her hair falling forward like a cataract, hereyes large with a tearless hunger. Pointing to the man on Jaspar's knee,she looked into the harper's face, and spoke to him.

  "Quick, the truth. I fear it no longer."

  Her voice was toneless and hoarse as an untuned string. She beat herhands together, and then stood with her fists pressed over her heart.

  "Quick, the truth."

  The old man turned the body gently to the grass, and still knelt at thewoman's feet.

  "It is Jean," he said, with great quietness, "Jean the swineherd. He isdead. God rest his soul!"

  She bent forward again with arm extended, her voice deep and hoarse inher throat.

  "Tell me, who is it that has slain my father?"

  "They of Gambrevault."

  "Ah!"

  Her eyes gleamed behind her hair as it fell dishevelled over her face.

  "And the rest--Bertrand, my brothers?"

  Her voice appealed him with a gradual fear. Jaspar the harper bowed hisface, and pointed to the tower. The girl straightened, and stoodquivering like a loosened bow.

  "God! In there! And Roland?"

  Again the harper's hand went up with the slow inevitableness of destiny.The flames, as beneath the incantations of a sibyl, leapt higher,roaring hungrily towards the heavens. The girl swayed away some paces,her lips moving silently, her hair fanned by the draught, blowing abouther like a veil. She turned to the tower, thrust up her hands to itwith a strong gesture of anguish and despair.

  A long while she stood in silence as in a kind of torpor, g
azing at thisred pyre of the Past, where memories leapt heavenwards in a golden hazeof smoke. The roar of the fire was as the voice of Fate. She heard itdim and distant like the far thunder of a sea. Beyond, around, above,the gaunt trees clawed at the stars with their leafless talons. Nightand the shadow of it were very apparent to the girl's soul.

  Jaspar the harper stood and watched her with a dumb and distant awe.Her rigid anguish cowed him into impotent silence. The woman's soulseemed to soar far above comfort, following the saffron smoke into thesilver aether of the infinite. The man stood apart, holding aloof withthe instinct of a dog, from a sorrow that he could not chasten. He wasone of those dull yet happy souls, who carry eloquence in their eyes,whose tongues are clumsy, but whose hearts are warm. He stood alooftherefore from Yeoland, dead Rual's daughter, pulling his ragged beard,and calling in prayer to the Virgin and the saints.

  Presently the girl turned very slowly, as one whose blood runs chill andheavy. Her eyes were still dry and crystal bright, her face likegranite, or a mask of ice. The man Jaspar hid his glances from her, andstared at the sod. He was fearful in measure of gaping blankly upon sogreat a grief.

  "Jaspar," she said, and her voice was clear now as the keen sweep of asword.

  He crooked the knee to her, stood shading his eyes with his wrinkledhand.

  "We alone are left," she said.

  "God's will, madame, God's will; He giveth, and taketh away. I, even I,am your servant."

  Her eyes lightened an instant as though red wrath streamed strongly fromher heart. Her mouth quivered. She chilled the mood, however, and stoodmotionless, save for her hands twining and twisting in her hair.

  "Does Heaven mock me?" she asked him, with a level bitterness.

  "How so, madame?" he answered her; "who would mock thee at such anhour?"

  "Who indeed?"

  "Not even Death. I pray you be comforted. There is a balm in years."

  They stood silent again in the streaming heat and radiance of the fire.A sudden wind had risen. They heard it crying far away in the infinitevastness of the woods. It grew, rushed near, waxed with a gradualclamour till the bare wilds seemed to breathe one great gathering roar.The flames flew slanting from the blackened battlements. The treesclutched and swayed, making moan under the calm light of the moon.

  The sound thrilled the girl. Her lips trembled, her form dilated.

  "Listen," she said, thrusting up her hands into the night, "the cry ofthe forest, the voice of the winter wind. What say they but'vengeance--vengeance--vengeance'?"