“I have come to bid you farewell. To-morrow morning the doors will be opened to you, and you can go forth; then I shall die.”
She spoke with a calmness that carried conviction. Brand’s love had become as necessary to her untutored heart, with its wild, elemental promptings, as the air to her nostrils; and he, with his perceptions rendered acute by emotional stress, knew that she spoke but the truth.
Then Aiäla’s strength seemed suddenly to give way; she covered her face with her hands, swayed like a lily in the wind, and faltered to the ground at Brand’s feet.
The spell was broken; the love in the rising stream of which he had unwittingly been standing overwhelmed and bore Brand away in its resistless course. He bent down to Aiäla and clasped her to his breast. She nestled to him with low murmurs of blissful content, and wound her soft arms about his neck.
As their lips met for the first time, the sordid world rolled away and was forgotten, and they seemed to rest on some palm-shaded isle in a sea of infinite delight, where the waves sang around them strong songs of peace and joy.
Three
Thus love grew, burgeoned, and flowered between these two thus strangely thrown together in the house of pestilence and death, like some rich, exotic plant. Brand no longer thought of departing. To him had come the end of Time, and the realisation of Eternity through infinity of joy. The ever-present danger of discovery, the inevitable consequence of which would have been death, added ardour to their bliss even as wind causes glowing embers to flush and glow more hotly. Their short meetings were full of rapture, and the hours they spent apart were long, delicious trances of remembrance and anticipation. Time was like a golden chain studded here and there at uncertain intervals with fire-hearted rubies.
The rainy, tempestuous weather continued, but the lovers did not miss the sun by day nor the stars by night. Safe in their warm nest they would listen to the muffled roar of the rain on the masoned roof, thrilling with a delicious realisation of the contrast between the cold and darkness outside, and the love and light which filled their little chamber. Under the influence of fulfilled love Aiäla became a new being, developing fresh and wonderful qualities every day. To her lover she was a perpetually unfolding rose of wonder and sweetness. Once, in the midst of a spring-day noon of changing moods she burst into tears, flung herself at Brand’s feet, and confessed that she had all along deceived him as to the difficulty of escaping; that on any of the nights of his imprisonment she could, without much danger, have guided him through the almost deserted house and into the silent street. Would he forgive her for having thus deceived him? He only found in what she told him a reason for loving her the more, if that were possible.
One morning, after Aiäla had left him, Brand heard the sound of footsteps and voices in the lower chamber. Then followed silence. After some little time he lifted the trap-door and looked down. He saw, lying upon trestles, the hideous corpse of an old woman,—another victim of the scourge. When Aiäla came again she did not mention the circumstance, and when Brand asked her about it she appeared to consider it not worth regarding. The body was that of the last of the original domestic servants, who had died during the previous night. It was removed for burial after dark.
Now and then Brand thought carelessly of the possibility of either Aiäla or himself taking the disease, but familiarity had, as is usual, bred contempt for the danger. Moreover, Brand was strongly imbued with fatalism, absorbed insensibly from the people among whom so much of his life had been spent. Once when he alluded to the danger, Aiäla mocked lightly at the notion, and he felt reassured. The superabundant vitality with which she thrilled seemed as though it were sufficient to defy any form of disease, if not death itself.