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!”