“It has—it has! And yet what am I now? Old before my time, swept away from the path of glory, as I neared the goal! A warrior should never utter a word of complaint—and yet—by the Sacrament of Heaven, I had much rather died with sword in hand, at the head of my hosts, than to wither away with this festering wound on yonder couch. I like not to count the pulsations of my dying heart.”
“Nay, my uncle,—chide not so bitterly. Thou wilt recover—thy sword will again flash at the head of armies!”
“My sword, Annabel, my sword,”—cried the warrior, as his eyes lit up with a strange brilliancy, and his wan features were crimsoned by a ruddy flush.
In a moment, the fair hands of the maiden bore the sword from its resting-place, in a nook of the Red Chamber, with a slow and weary movement, as though the massive piece of iron which she trailed along the marble floor, exceeded her maidenly strength to lift on high.
“It is my sword, it is my sword”—shrieked the warrior, as he flung the robes of purple back from his muscular, though attenuated shoulder, and raised his proud form to its full height—“Look, Annabel, how it gleams in the light! So it gleamed on the walls of Jerusalem, so it shone aloft over the desert-sands of the Syrian wilderness! It will gleam over the battle-field again! Ay, again will the snow-white plume of Julian Di Albarone wave over the ranks of the fray, while ten thousand warriors hail that plume as their beacon-light!”
He swung the sword aloft in the air; his whole form was moved by excitement; every vein filled and every pulse throbbed; his eye flashed like a thing of flame, and his whitened lip trembled with the glorious expression of battle-scorn.
Thrice he waved the sword around his head; but when the impulse of this sudden excitement died away, his eyes lost their flashing brightness, his limbs their vigor, and Julian of Albarone tottered as he stood upon the marble floor, and stepping hurriedly backward, fell heavily upon the couch of the Red Chamber.
“The goblet, fair niece—the goblet on the beaufet. Haste thee—I am faint.”
As the words broke gaspingly from the sick man’s lips, the Ladye Annabel turned hastily to bring the goblet, and as she turned, she beheld the head of Lord Julian resting uneasily on his pillow, while his left arm hung heavily over the side of the couch.
She turned again with trembling footsteps, and hastened to arrange the pillow of the sick warrior. Her fair hands smoothed the pillow of down, and she gently raised his head from the couch.