So it was with Rosamunde that summer night as she stood alone on the wind-swept walls and watched the sun go down in flame. All hope had ebbed from her, and her pure faith had, like an angel, spread its wings, and vanished into the distant gloom. The sky seemed but an iron dome, riveted above the helpless world. All eloquence had passed away with the unfathomable truths of life that sometimes vivify and sometimes kill.
What had life given her? Insult and pain, death, terror, and unanswered prayers! Had not her beauty been a curse? What single blessing had she won but the strong love of a strong man’s heart, one fierce melody in the strifes of sound! And now this one good gift seemed gone, snatched like a jewel from her breast by the lean hand of a mocking fate.
In great bitterness she thrust up her arms and cried aloud under the sky:
“God, if there be a God, hear my voice. Give me some sign that I may know that we are not brute beasts who live to beget life, then—to die. Give me some sign of immortality. Show me that wisdom rules the heavens, that we of earth are not dust and air.”
And still the sun approached the sea, and still the hoarse waves laughed below as though there were no hope in heaven.
“Great God,” she cried again, her hands outstretched towards the west, “give me but one word in my heart, that I may know there is a God, and that some kindness rules the world.”
Yet there was no still small voice as that which spoke to the prophet in the cave when all the discords of the earth moved him to doubt in God’s design. The sea and sky were full of life, the wild woods clamoured and the west wind blew. And yet there shone no light in heaven to comfort her whose faith was dim.
Slowly, with her head adroop, Rosamunde passed back to the Abbess’s room, and stole in silently, to find Tristan asleep. A small lamp burnt on a sconce in the wall, shedding a vague light on the sleeping man’s face. Rosamunde, with the look of one very weary, drew a great wooden chair that had been the Abbess’s towards the bed, lay back therein, and rested her chin upon her hand.
The night had fallen about Holy Guard, filling its broken galleries with gloom. The stars were shining, and from below came the voices of those who sat at meat in the abbey refectory with Blanche the Duchess. It was Rosamunde’s vigil, and no one disturbed her, for she had wine and bread with her in the room.
Once more the heat of her despair died down like a fire that lacks for fuel. Her very soul seemed weary to death, and very lonely in that silent room. A hundred dark thoughts coursed through her brain: the sure knowledge that Tristan would die, that God had deserted her, if there were a God. Apathy possessed her hour by hour; afar she heard the sound of the sea, and the wind in the windows overhead.