“Have you no better words for me than these?”
She swayed forward suddenly, and Tristan saw that she was faint. He threw down the axe, sprang up the stairway, and stretched out his hands to her with sudden pity. Hunger and fear had done their work. He bore her back like a child into the room, and laid her on the bed where Miriam the Jewess knelt in prayer. Then, going out, he left the women alone together.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
A strange yet beautiful timidity had fallen upon Rosamunde when Tristan next darkened the doorway of the room. He had left her to Miriam’s care, and, after sending in wine and food from his sumpter mules, had contented himself with giving the hapless dead fit burial. With Telamon, his man, at his heels, he had passed through all the vaults, chambers, and galleries of the place, that he might rest assured that no starving wretches were left therein. In one damp cell he found an old man dead. Between them they carried him out into the sun, buried him apart from the grim gatherings of the court.
When the west grew red over the hills, Tristan passed alone into the garden and climbed the stairway to Rosamunde’s room. The Lady of Joyous Vale was seated on a carved oak settle, her hair uncoifed, falling in rich folds upon her neck. The strange timidity upon her face was the more eloquent by reason of her old-time pride. Miriam crept out and left the two together; in the garden she found Telamon, and since the youth coloured when she spoke to him, she was not afraid of letting her eyes grow bright.
Tristan le Sauvage stood before Rosamunde, a great tenderness lighting his gaunt face so that it seemed transfigured in the woman’s eyes. It was not the Tristan she had known of old, the sullen and over-strenuous boy, who blushed and stammered with his tongue. The man who stood before her was in his mighty prime, terrible in wrath, tender to weak things, fearless as a god. This Tristan had passed through deep waters, had faced death and defeated despair. The soul in him was greater than of yore, even because he had known sorrow and climbed to the summit of a more tragic strength.
Rosamunde, pale, penitent, discovered the great parable of life eloquent against herself. It was she who had ruled Tristan in the days that had passed away. Love and the deep passion-throes of life had changed the charm, strengthening the man, mellowing the woman. She conceived strange awe of Tristan as she gazed on his face that night, and saw the deep lines sorrow and pain had marked thereon.
Half timidly she beckoned him to the carved bench, even with the shyness of one who was half ashamed.
“Tristan,” she said, “we are more silent than of old.”
The man seemed sunk in thought for the moment as he gazed upon her face.