Pandart, wincing as he walked, led Tristan amid the flowers and fruit trees to where a great cedar stood, and a low green mound received the sunlight streaming through the boughs. Tall cypresses were crowded near, like mutes standing about a grave, while the great cedar’s vaulted gloom made the place solemn as a shrine.
When Tristan had looked long on the green mound in silence, he questioned Pandart further, and received the truth. Ogier had slain Columbe at the Bishop’s bidding, even to make room for Rosamunde, whom they had brought from Agravale. They had buried Columbe there under the light of the moon, with the red rose of death over her heart. Tristan said hardly a word, but suffered Pandart to pass back to the house, where his dame, a thin woman with a querulous face, cringed and waited for him behind the door. Pandart went in and bade her swathe his arm.
Meanwhile Rosamunde walked alone on the terrace-way where the oleanders bloomed in their stone jars. She was a strange woman, this Lady of the Seven Streams, devout yet passionate, gracious yet ever too enamoured of her pride. Perverse and incomprehensible, half shrew, half saint, beautiful even in her perversity, she was destined to pain those who gave her love. Jealous of her liberty, she would go shackled by a whim, provided the whim was of her own forging. Tristan she had believed dead these many months, and Tristan loved her. As a woman, she knew that well. Yet she had ordained it in her heart that Tristan’s love was mere summer madness, a boy’s love, beneath her pride.
Columbe his sister, then, was dead. Of the white-faced child from Purple Isle Rosamunde had had no knowledge. She had often gazed at the fresh-tufted mound under the cedar, but Pandart had kept silence and betrayed nothing. She felt a woman’s pity for this blue-eyed child reft from her home, bruised by the passions of a ruffian crew, done to death in this wild hermitage. The truth revealed to her her own real peril and the grim depths of Jocelyn’s perfidy.
Anon, she left the terrace and passed towards the cedar. Infinite thought dwelt in her large eyes, a beautiful wistfulness upon her mouth. Coming to the cypresses, she stood to listen. A sound, deep and significant, quickened the look of pity on her face. She stood open-mouthed, listening to the sound of a strong man weeping. There was an almost godly pathos in those tears. The truth thrilled Rosamunde to the core of her red heart, made her lips quiver, her eyes grow hot.
Tristan weeping! This great warm-hearted creature broken down by the touch of death! She listened with tingling ears, half ashamed of prying upon such sorrow, for the sound awed her utterly, dethroned the pride from out her soul. All the deep instincts of her womanhood awoke, tremulous and tender, poignant with another’s pain.
By sudden impulse she pushed past the cypresses, stood under the huge shadows of the cedar. Tristan was lying full length upon the grave, his face hidden within his arms. She saw his shoulders rise and fall, and he still had the silver circlet gripped in his right hand. Rosamunde stood impotent, hesitating to violate such grief as this.
Presently the man grew calmer, and the passion seemed to pass like a storm over the sea. Perhaps some spirit voice stilled the deep waters, the cry of the Christ to foaming Galilee. Rosamunde, moving over the grass, stooped, touched Tristan’s shoulder with her hand.
He twisted round like one smitten with a hot iron, and there was a shadow as of anger on his face. It was shame to a strong man such as Tristan to be caught with tears upon his cheeks. He rose up and knelt beside the grave, propping himself upon one arm. Rosamunde’s hand was still upon his shoulder; his other arm he held before his eyes.
“Madame,” he said sullenly, “must you stare upon my weakness thus?”