That night, when the round moon stood full upon the mountains, a line of spears glittered on the road that threaded the pass. On high the great peaks shone amid the stars, splashed with the moonlight, ribbed with deep shadows. A hundred torrents foamed in the ravines, their massed thunder rising like the hoarse cries of a multitude. Above, the peaks seemed monuments of silence, sublime and tranquil as they communed with the stars. Far below on the northern slopes the moonlit forests beat like a sea upon the bases of the mountains.
Tristan and Blanche rode side by side, the peasant trudging before their horses, an oaken staff over his shoulder. There were deep lines of thought on the woman’s face; it seemed wreathed in shadows, though the moonlight played upon her eyes and on the silver stephanos in her hair. The sublimity of the scene had constrained them to silence. Man and his machinations seemed infinitely small under the grand calm of the towering peaks.
Tristan’s thoughts had flown to Rosamunde and all the turbulence of those short months since he had sailed from Purple Isle to seek his sister over the sea. Glimmerings of death seemed to steal on him that night; vague voices called from the bleak cliffs above; mystery encompassed him and the strange twilight of the unknown.
“Lady,” he said suddenly, turning towards her in the moonlight, “how these torrents thunder. Methinks I hear the voices of the dead crying among the mountains. ‘Brother,’ they call me. Never have I known this mood before.”
Blanche’s eyes were fixed upon his face. She saw no fear there, only some sadness round the dogged mouth, a vague melancholy in the deep-set eyes.
“Who would not remember the dead,” she answered him, “amid these great mountains under the moon? Yonder white peak I would name the Christ. Does he not shine on us out of the night?”
“Even strong men die.”
“Not so,” she said; “the great ones never die. There is life in death for such as live like men. Can knightliness and honour end in dust? Nay, for they stand like these great mountains, rare spirits fronting the evil of the world, standing for God until the judgment come.”
“True, true,” he answered her; “and should a man grudge his poor dust to the All-Father who has made us men?”
“Never would I mourn for one,” she cried, “who died in some fair battle for the truth. They are not dead these great ones who have stood like mighty sentinels upon the towers of heaven. Joy is the incense we should give to such, not empty weeping and rebellious grief.”