Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome. Gallizier Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ And away they strayed from the rest of the crowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, here and there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silvery brightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted. Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows of the grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side.

      "This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest – for awhile – far from the world."

      They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses and hyacinths and fragrant shrubs – a very paradise for lovers. —

      The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silence with their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in the distance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky.

      When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke.

      "How wonderful is this peace!"

      Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart.

      As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out his hands entreatingly.

      "Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer – "

      She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stone bench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under this new light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion of the afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as if shadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared not approach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in her eyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight.

      He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supreme impulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words that hovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he loved so well? Was it some dark power he wot not of?

      At last he broke through his restraint.

      "Hellayne – " he whispered low. "Hellayne – I love you!"

      She did not move.

      There was a deep silence.

      Then she answered.

      "Oh, why have you said the word!"

      What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he was no longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in a dense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that he saw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks.

      Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the interwoven branches.

      She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm.

      "Let us go, Tristan!" she said.

      "My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the eyes that held a night of mystery.

      "You have it," she said calmly.

      "It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover – "

      "Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers. – Look!"

      And he looked.

      Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.

      He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not.

      He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and pressed upon them his fevered lips.

      "I do not understand – " he moaned.

      She regarded him fixedly.

      "I am another's wife – "

      His head drooped.

      "When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?"

      She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously.

      "Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be."

      "I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart – soul of my soul? – What must I do, to win you for my own – to give you happiness?"

      A negative gesture came in response.

      "Is sin ever happiness?"

      "The priests say not! And yet – our love is not sinful – "

      "The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly.

      He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres, suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomless abyss of despair.

      Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyes fastened upon him in a compelling gaze.

      "Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomable wells of dreams. "When love is with you – does aught matter? Does sin – discovery – God himself – matter?"

      With a frightened cry she drew back.

      But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled the shifting violet orbs.

      "Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face.

      "Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell.

      Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon the woods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillness of a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snapped beneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strong arms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered his caresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck.

      Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone.

      In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless, stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared at them. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passed through Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over the man's face. No features were visible.

      And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyes that had surprised their tryst.

      It was Count Roger de Laval.

      The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come.

      It was growing ever darker in the forest, and when he looked up again he saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Her scarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips.

      "Will СКАЧАТЬ