Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

"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 though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.

Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear His voice.

So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode close at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.

"Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."

He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his mother'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 of walls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, was bidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother's chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of golden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver, its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with purple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and numberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installed in the great castle of Gambrevault.

So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what had passed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have dreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute pathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins that stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever. Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel for the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than an hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and absolution.

That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in the castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of honour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue silk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left Yeoland 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 silence and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes met the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal faith he had forecast in his dreams.