Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  VIII

  The crowd had streamed from the cavern, swirling like black water underthe tossing torches, the hollow galleries reverberating to the rush ofmany feet. Prosper had gone, borne away by the seditious captains ofthe Commune and the armed burghers who had guarded the entries. A greatsilence had fallen upon the crypt. Fulviac and the girl were left bythe altar of black marble, their one lamp burning solitary in the gulfof gloom.

  Fulviac had the air of a man whose favourite hawk had flown with fettle,and brought her quarry tumbling out of the clouds. He was warm with thezest of it, and his tawny eyes sparkled.

  "May the Virgin smile on us!" he said. "Gilderoy will serve our ends."

  The girl's eyes searched him gravely.

  "You make holy war," she charged him.

  "Ha, my sister, it is well to profess a strong conviction in the justiceof one's cause. Tell men they are heroes, patriots, martyrs, and youwill make good fighting stuff. Applaud fanaticism, make great parade ofrighteousness, hail the Deity as patron, assemble all the saints underyour banner. Ha, trust me, that is a way to topple a kingdom. Come, wemust stir."

  By many labyrinthine passages, strange galleries of death, they passedtogether from the dark deeps of the catacombs. At one point the roofshone silvered as with dew, and the air stood damp as in a marsh on awinter's eve. The river Tamar flowed above them in its rocky bed, soFulviac told the girl. Anon they came out by a narrow stair that openedby a briar-grown throat into a thicket of old oaks in the Gilderoymeadows. The stairhead was covered by a species of stone trap thatcould be covered and concealed by sods. In the thicket a man awaitedthem with the bridles of three horses over his arm. Fulviac heldYeoland's stirrup, and they rode out, the three of them, from under thetrees.

  A full moon swam in a purple black sky amid a shower of shimmeringstars. Gilderoy, with its climbing towers and turrets, stood out whiteunder the moon. The city walls gleamed like alabaster in the magicglow. In the meadows the ringlets of the river glimmered. Far anddistant rose the nebulous midnight of the woods.

  Fulviac had bared his head to an inconstant and torpid breeze. Theywere riding for the west along a bridle track that curled grey and dimthrough the sombre meadows. The calm, soundless vault of the world rosenow in contrast to the canopies of stone and the passion-throes of thecatacombs. Human moil and effort seemed infinitely little under theeternal scrutiny of the stars. So thought the man for the moment, as herode with his chin sunk upon his breast, watching keenly the girl at hisside.

  Yeoland was young. All the roses of youth were budding about her soul;idealism, like the essence of crushed violets, hovered heavy over theworld. Her soul as yet was no frayed and listless lute, thrummed intodiscords by the bony hand of care. She was built for love, a temple ofwhite marble, lit by lamps of rubeous glory. Colours flashed throughthe red sanctuaries of the flesh. Yet pain and great woe had smittenher. The grim destinies of earth seemed bent on thrusting an innocentpilgrim into the turbulent contradictions of life.

  The pageant in the catacombs that night had stirred her strangely beyondbelief. The fantastic faces, the zeal, the hot words of gesturingenthusiasm, these were things new to her, therefore the more vivid andconvincing. New worlds, new passions, seemed to burst into being underthe stars. She was utterly silent as she rode, looking forth into thenight. Her hood had fallen back; her face shone white and clear; hereyes gleamed in the moonlight. Fulviac, like a chess-player who hadevolved some subtle scheme, rode and watched her with a smile deep inhis eyes. For the moment he was content to leave her to the magic ofher own thoughts.

  At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into theheart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under agrander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed.It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from asea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair andexquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress ofthe hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.

  Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure themeaning of her mood. Her lips were half parted as though she had wordsupon her tongue, but still hesitated from some scruple of pride. Hestraightened in the saddle, and waited for her to unbosom to him with aconfident reserve.

  "Well?" he said at length, since she still lingered in her silence.

  "How much one may learn in a day," she answered, drawing her whitepalfrey nearer to his horse.

  Fulviac agreed with her.

  "The man on the end of the rope," he said, "learns in two minutes thatwhich has puzzled philosophers since Adam loved Eve."

  She turned to him with an eagerness that was almost passionate even inits suppressed vigour.

  "How long was it before you came to pity your fellows?"

  "Some minutes, not more."

  "And the conversion?"

  "Shall satisfy you one day. For the present I will buckle up sounsavoury a fable in my bosom. Tell me what you have learnt atGilderoy."

  Yeoland looked at the moon. The man saw great sadness upon her face,but also an inspired radiance that made its very beauty the moreremarkable. He foresaw in an instant that they were coming to deepermatters. Superficialities, the mannerisms of life, were falling away.The girl's heart beat near to his; he felt a luminous sympathy of spiritrise round them like the gold of a Byzantine background.

  "Come," he said, with a burst of beneficence, "you are beginning tounderstand me."

  She jerked a swift glance at him, like the look of a half-tamed falcon.

  "You are a man, for all your sneers and vapourings."

  "I had a heart once. Call me an oak, broken, twisted, aged, but an oakstill."

  Yeoland drew quite close to him, so that her skirt almost brushed hishorse's flank. Fulviac's shadow fell athwart her. Only her face shoneclear in the moonlight.

  "I have ceased," she said, "to look upon life as a stretch of blue, alaughing dawn."

  "Good."

  "I have learnt that woe is the crown of years."

  "Good again."

  "That life is full of violence and wrong."

  "A platitude. Yes. Life consists in learning platitudes."

  "I am only one woman among thousands."

  "A revelation."

  "You jeer."

  "Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb."

  "Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is anerror to close up grief in the casket of self."

  Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of thenight. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, hedelivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristicconfessions that were wholly logical.

  "I am a selfish vagabond," he said; "I appeal to Peter's keys whetherall ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others.The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generousjustice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an ironsceptre. There, you have my creed."

  "And God?" she asked him.

  "Is a most useful subordinate."

  "You do not mean that?"

  "I do not."

  She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her ownhome flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faithand devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeancebeaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.

  "It is God's war," she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding inher voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"

  "Enough," he answered her.

  "And the rest?"

  "God shall make all plain in due season."

  Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle's towers still nettedthe moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strodedown in multitudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm,with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. T
he world seemedroofed with a dome of dusky steel.

  Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Aroundclimbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn andtumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley.Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left,from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, itsboughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves.The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier thatglistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews casttheir gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyardstretched out its mossy arms east and west.

  The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pinesby the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland passed up through weeds andbrambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening witha thorny web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. Thetiled floor was choked with grass; a rickety door drooped rotten on itsrusty hinges.

  Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all wasruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the casements broken.

  "We must find harbour here," said the man, "our horses go farto-morrow."

  "A cheerful hostel, this."

  "Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I'll see to that."

  "No. I am hungry."

  The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east,where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There wasa great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed asthough giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow,with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about itssteps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooringstill stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom camein with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He alsogave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.

  "We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging," he said to her;"wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."

  She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, rangedit with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.

  "And you?" she said to Fulviac.

  "Damian and I hold the porch."

  "You will be cold."

  "I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!"

  He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closedthe rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered bassinet and afrayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviacgestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of thechapel, where laurels grew thick and lusty about the walls. When hereturned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner ofthe porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message intohis master's ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.

  An hour passed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vastquiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In thesky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes.In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.

  An owl's cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as thoughdropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air.It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, asof some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, andviol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magicof the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descendthe burning stair of heaven.

  A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from thealtar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over thebroken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the casements.The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heardcrying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanctity.It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glowelapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured insilver omnipotence over the ruin.

  From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones.A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. Thegirl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced inthe shadow.

  "Fulviac."

  Her voice was hoarse and whispering, strained as the overwrought stringsof a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak,calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself,as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groomstill crouched in the dark corner.

  "Fulviac."

  She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood hadfallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of asupernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shockof awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held herarm.

  "Speak. What has chanced to you?"

  She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice ofGod. Her hands were torn and bloody from the thorns.

  "The Virgin has appeared to me."

  "Are you mad?"

  "The Virgin."

  "Some ghost or phantom."

  "No, no, hear me."

  She stretched out her hands like one smitten blind, and took breathswiftly in sudden gasps.

  "Hear me, I was but asleep, woke, and heard music. The Virgin came outupon the altar, her face like the moon, her robes white as the stars.There was great light, great glory. And she spoke to me. Mother ofGod, what am I that I should be chosen thus!"

  "Speak. Can this be true?"

  "The truth, the truth!"

  Fulviac fell on his knees with a great gesture of awe. The girl, herface turned to the moon, stood quivering like a reed, her lips moving asif in prayer.

  "Her message, child?"

  "Ah, it was this: 'Go forth a virgin, and lead the hosts of the Lord.'"

  Fulviac's face was in shadow. He thrust up his hands to the heavens,but would not so much as glance at the girl above him. His voice rangout in the silence of the night:--

  "Gloria tibi, Sancta Maria! Gloria tibi, Domine!"