XXX
Paris and Helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world ofthe mind they still live, young and glorious as when the Grecian galleysploughed foam through the blue AEgean. The world loves a lover.Troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poorrealists can hope to do. We owe an eternal gratitude to those who havestood for love in history. All men might well desire to play theTristan to Iseult of the Irish eyes. We forget Gemma Donati, and followwith Dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of Beatrice inParadise.
Now the Lord Flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumbleinto heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune.God gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few,a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world.Many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautifulface and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. The chance is that sucha business turns out miserably. It is a wise rule to search the worldthrough to find your Beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. Happy isthe man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry ofheaven. Happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeralflower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable,unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. It is given to few tolove wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.
That summer day Flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through thewoods on the way to Gambrevault. The horse had dropped to a trot, andthe man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. He wasstill red from the melee; his eyes were bright and triumphant. The girlat his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, herglances clouded. The terrific action of the last hour still seemed toweigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport ofcontending sentiments. No sooner had she struggled to some level ofsaintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all thetinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere Eve, a child ofNature.
Flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready togive his life for the woman he serves. Love seemed to rise from her andplay upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfiguredhim, and he longed to touch her hair.
"At last."
"Lord?"
"Treat me as a man, I hate that epithet."
"You are a great signor."
"What are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! I am only great so longas you trust and honour me."
"Your power might appear precarious."
"As you will."
"Yet war is loose!"
He looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand.
"And war at its worst. I have seen enough in three days to make meloathe your partisans and their principles."
"Perhaps."
"It is a wicked and inhuman business."
"What are you going to do with me?" she said.
"Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like apearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault."
"You incur the greater peril."
"Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?"
She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as thoughsome spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped inthe man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed ananswer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herselfabsolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoptionby Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned toher as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, findingquaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talkat such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its manytones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep inoblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play ofthought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began tocomprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer ariddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicatecolouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorioussense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy ofall the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.
Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna forher, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on theiniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover,the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocentingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; thatpersonalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of thatsympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a goldencloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually intohis keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided herdoubts for her. They were to let political considerations and theephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It wassufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbiddenfruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were notashamed to hear His voice.
So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, androde over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. TheGilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened theretreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rodeclose at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, sawthe colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.
"Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwarkyou against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shallsee God more clearly for looking in your eyes."
He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been hismother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used.Its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line ofwalls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, wasbidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother'schests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner ofgolden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver,its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung withpurple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, aprayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, andnumberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installedin the great castle of Gambrevault.
So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what hadpassed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would havedreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mutepathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins thatstare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever.Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapelfor the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than anhour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance andabsolution.
That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in thecastle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids ofhonour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket ofviolet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light bluesilk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterresand stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and leftYeoland and the man alone.
She seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence,of her reserve, in a few short hours. Her mood inclined towards silenceand a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes metthe man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the idealfaith he had forecast in his dreams.
They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy ofsoul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touchedher hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful,too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timiditypossessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and thepure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a beingwrapped round with the rarest c
hivalry of heaven.
Their words were very simple and infrequent.
"I have been thinking," said the girl.
"Yes?"
"How war seems ever in the world."
"How else should I have won you?"
She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmeringgold through the yews.
"I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not loseme easily. What if I bring you to ruin?"
"I take everything to myself."
"They believe me a saint."
"And I!"
"My conscience will reproach me, but now----"
"Well?"
"I am too happy to remember."
Their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul.Flavian kissed her hand.
"Forget it all," he said, "save the words I spoke to you over thatforest grave. Whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, Icare not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. Icould meet God to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all yourheart."
From a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes andviols swirled out upon the air. The west grew faint, and twilightincreased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. Under theyew boughs, Flavian and Yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke forthem; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees.They said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough.When the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, Flaviankissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who werecurled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music offlute and viol.
The man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. Hepassed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of thesummer sea.
And as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks offlame start out against the black background of the night. They werethe rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with thedistant prophecy of war.
Love Among the Ruins Page 30