*CHAPTER II*
*THE QUEEN OF NIGHT*
A week had passed since Otto's arrival in Rome. Eckhardt, wrapped inhis own dark fancies, had only appeared at the palace on the Aventinewhen compelled to do so in the course of his newly resumed duties. Theterrible presentiment which had haunted him night and day since he leftthe gray, bleak winter skies of his native land, had become intensifiedduring the past days. Day and night he brooded over the terriblefascination of those eyes which had laid their spell upon him, over theamazing resemblance of the apparition to the one long dead in her grave.And the more he pondered the heavier grew his heart within him, andvainly he groped for a ray of light upon his dark and lonely path,vainly for a guiding hand to conduct him from the labyrinth of doubt andfear.
It had been a warm and sultry day. Towards evening dark clouds hadrisen over the Tyrrhene Sea and spread in long heavy banks across theazure of the sky. Sudden squalls of rain swept down at short intervals,driving the people into shelter. All the life of the streets tookrefuge in arcades or within dimly lighted churches. Soon the slipperymarble pavements were deserted, and the water from the guttered roofsdripped dolefully into overflowing cisterns. A strange atmosphere ofdiscomfort and apprehension lay over the city.
The storm increased as evening fell. From the seclusion of the gloomychamber he occupied in the old weather-beaten palace of the Pierleoni,Eckhardt looked out into the growing darkness. The clouds chased eachother wildly and the driving rain obliterated every outline.
How long he had thus stood, he did not know. A rattle of hailstonesagainst the window, a gust of wind, which suddenly blew into his face,and the lurid glare of lightning which flashed through theever-deepening cloud-bank, roused Eckhardt from his reverie to a senseof reality. The lamp on the table shed a fitful glare over thesurrounding objects. Now the deep boom of thunder reverberating throughthe hills caused him to start from his listless attitude. Just as heturned, the lamp gave a dismal crackle and went out, leaving him inStygian gloom. With an exclamation less reverent than expressive,Eckhardt groped his way through the darkness, vainly endeavouring tofind a flint-stone. A flash of lightning which came to his aid not onlyrevealed to him the desired object, but likewise a tall, shadowy formstanding on the threshold. From the dense obscurity which enshroudedhim, Eckhardt could not, in the intermittent flashes of lightning, seethe stranger's features, but a singular, and even to himself quiteinexplicable perversity of humour, kept him silent and unwilling todeclare his presence, although he instinctively felt that the strangevisitor, whoever he was, had seen him. Meanwhile the latter advanced apace or two, paused, peered through the gloom and spoke with a voicestrangely blended with deference and irony:
"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"
Without once taking his eyes from the individual, whose dark form nowstood clearly revealed in the lightning flashes, which followed eachother at shorter intervals, the same strange obstinacy stiffenedEckhardt's tongue, and concealed in the gloom, he still held his peace.But the stranger drew nearer, till in height and breadth he seemedsuddenly to overshadow the Margrave, and once again the voice spoke:
"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"
"I am here!" the latter replied curtly, rising out of the darkness, andstriking the flint-stones, he succeeded, after some vain efforts, inrelighting the lamp. As he did so, a tremendous peal of thunder shookthe house and the stranger precipitately retreated into the shadow ofthe doorway.
"You are the bearer of a message?" Eckhardt turned towards him, withunsteady voice. The stranger made no move to deliver what the otherseemed to expect.
"Everything in death has its counterpart in life," he replied with acalm, passionless voice which, by its very absence of inflection,thrilled Eckhardt strangely. "If you have the courage--follow me!"
Without a word the Margrave placed upon his head a skullcap of linkedmail, and after having adjusted his armour, turned to the mysteriousmessenger.
"Who bade you speak those words?"
"One you have seen before."
"Where?"
"Your memory will tell you."
"Her name?"
"You will hear it from her own lips."
"Where will you lead me?"
"Follow me and you will see."
"Why do you conceal your face?"
"To hide the blush for the thing called man."
The stranger's enigmatic reply added to Eckhardt's conviction that thisnight of all was destined to clear the mystery which enshrouded hislife.
A mighty struggle, such as he had never before known, seemed to rend hissoul, as with throbbing heart he followed his strange guide on hismysterious errand. Thus they sped through the storm-swept city withoutmeeting one single human being. At the top of the Esquiline they cameto a momentary standstill, for the storm raged with a force that nothingcould resist. Leaning for a moment against a ruined portico, Eckhardtgazed westward over the night-wrapt city. In the driving rain he couldscarcely distinguish the huge structures of the Flavian Amphitheatre andthe palaces on the Capitoline hill. The Janiculan Mount stood out likea darker storm-cloud against the lowering sky, and the air was filledwith a dull moan and murmur like the breathing of a sleeping giant. Onthe southern slope of the hill the wind attacked them with renewed fury,and the blasts howled up the Clivus Martis and the Appian Way. Theregion seemed completely deserted. Only a solitary travelling chariotrolled now and then, clattering, over the stones.
The road gradually turned off to the right. The dark mass to their leftwas the tomb of the Scipios and there in front, hardly visible in thedarkness of night, rose the arch of Drusus, through which their way ledthem. Eckhardt took care to note every landmark which he passed, tofind the way, should occasion arise, without his guide. The latter,constantly preceding him, took no note of the Margrave's scrutiny, butcontinued unequivocally upon his way, leaving it to Eckhardt to followhim, or not.
A blinding flash of lightning illumined the landscape far away to theaqueducts and the Alban hills, followed by a deafening peal of thunder.The uproar of the elements for a time shook Eckhardt's resolution.
Just then he heard the clanging of a gate.
An intoxicating perfume of roses and oleander wooed his bewilderedsenses as his guide conducted him through a labyrinthine maze of windingpaths. Only an occasional gleam of lightning revealed to the Margravethat they traversed a garden of considerable extent. Now the shadowyoutlines of a vast structure, illumined in some parts, appeared beyondthe dark cypress avenue down which they strode at a rapid pace.
Suddenly Eckhardt paused, addressing his guide: "Where am I, and why amI here?"
The stranger turned, regarding him intently. Then he replied:
"I have nothing to add to my errand. If you fear to follow me, there isyet time to retreat."
Had he played upon a point less sensitive, Eckhardt might have turnedhis back even now upon the groves, whose whispering gloom was to himmore terrible than the din of battle, and whose mysterious perfumesexercised an almost bewildering effect upon his overwrought senses.
A moment's deliberation only and Eckhardt replied:
"Lead on! I follow!"
He was now resolved to penetrate at every hazard the mystery whichmocked his life, his waking hours and his dreams.
On they walked.
Here and there, from branch-shadowed thickets gleamed the stone-face ofa sphinx or the white column of an obelisk, illumined by the lightningsthat shot through the limitless depth of the midnight sky. The stormrustled among the arched branches, driving the dead and dying leaves ina mad whirl through the wooded labyrinth.
At last, Eckhardt's strange guide stopped before a cypress hedge ofgreat height, which loomed black in the night, and penetrating throughan opening scarce wide enough for one man, beckoned to Eckhardt tofollow him. As the latter did so he stared in breathless bewildermentupon the scene which unfolded itself to his gaze.
> The cypress hedge formed the entrance to a grotto, the interior of whichwas faintly lighted by a crystal lamp of tenderest rose lustre.
For a moment Eckhardt paused where he stood, then he touched his headwith both hands, as if wondering if he were dreaming or awake. If itwas not the work of sorcery, if he was not the victim of some strangehallucination, if it was not indeed a miracle--what was it? He gazedround, awe-struck, bewildered. His guide had disappeared.
The denizen of the grotto, a woman reclining on a divan, like a goddessreceiving the homage of her worshippers, was the image of the one whohad gone from him for ever, and the longer his gaze was riveted on thisenchanting counterfeit of Ginevra, the more his blood began to seetheand his senses to reel.
Slowly he moved toward the enchantress, who from her half-recliningposition fixed her eyes in a long and questioning gaze upon thenew-comer, a gaze which thrilled him through and through. He dared notlook into those eyes, which he felt burning into his. His head wasbeginning to spin and his heart to beat with a strange sensation ofwonderment and fear. Never till this hour had he seen Ginevra's equal inbeauty, and now that it broke on his vision, it was with the face, theform, the hair, the eyes, the hands, of the woman so passionately loved.Only the face was more pale--even with the pallor of death, and therewas something in the depths of those eyes which he had never seen inGinevra's. But the light, the perfume, the place and the seductivebeauty of the woman before him, garbed as she was in a filmy,transparent robe of silvery tissue, which clung like a pale mist aboutthe voluptuous curves of her body, flowing round her like the glisteningwaves of a cascade, began to play havoc with his senses.
"Welcome, stranger, in the Groves of Enchantment," she spoke, waving herbeautiful snowy arms toward her visitor. "I rejoice to see that yourcourage deserves the welcome."
There was an undercurrent of laughter in her musical tones, as shepointed to a seat by her side. Unable to answer, unable to resist,Eckhardt moved a few paces nearer. His brain whirled. For a momentGinevra's image seemed forgotten in the contemplation of the rival ofher dead beauty. A wild, desperate longing seized him. On a suddenimpulse he turned away, in a dizzy effort to escape from the mesmericgleam of those sombre, haunting eyes, which pierced the very depths ofhis soul. Fascinated, at the same time repelled, his very soul yearnedfor her whose embrace he knew was destruction and he was filled with astrange sudden fear. There was something terrible in the steadfastcontemplation which the woman bestowed upon him,--something that seemedto lie outside the pale of human passions, and the pallor of herexquisite face seemed to increase in proportion as the devouring fire ofher eyes burnt more intensely.
"Are you afraid of me?" she laughed, raising her arms and holding themout toward him.
Still he hesitated. His breast heaved madly as his eyes met those,which swam in a soft languor, strangely intoxicating. Her lips parted ina faint sigh.
"Eckhardt," she said tremulously, "Eckhardt."
Then she paused as if to watch the effect of her words upon him.
Mute, oppressed by indistinct hovering memories, Eckhardt fed his gazeon her seductive fairness, but a terrible pain and anguish gnawed at hisheart. Not only the face, even the voice was that of Ginevra.
"Everything in death has its counterpart in life:"--
That had been the pass-word to her presence.
One devouring look--and forgetting all fear and warning and all presenceof mind he rushed towards that flashing danger-signal of beauty, thatseemed to burn the very air encompassing it, that living image of hisdead wife, and with wild eyes, outstretched arms and breathlessutterance, he cried: "Ginevra!"
She whom he thus called turned toward him, as he came with the air of amadman upon her, and her marvellous loveliness, as she raised her darkeyes questioningly to his, checked his impetuous haste, held himtongue-tied, bewildered and unmanned.
And truly, nothing more beautiful in the shape of woman could beimagined than she. Her fairness was of that rare and subtle type whichhas in all ages overwhelmed reason, blinded judgment and played havocwith the passions of men.
Well did she know her own surpassing charm and thoroughly did sheestimate the value of her fatal power to lure and to madden and totorture all whom she chose to make the victim of her almost resistlessattraction. Her hair, black as night, was arranged loosely under ajewelled coif. Her eyes, large and brilliant, shone from under browsdelicately arched. Her satin skin was of the creamy, colourless,Southern type, in startling contrast to the brilliant scarlet of thesmall bewitching mouth.
Beautiful and delicate as the ensemble was, there was in that enchantingface a lingering expression, which a woman would have hated and a manwould have feared.
"Ginevra!" Eckhardt cried, then he checked himself, for, her large eyes,suddenly cold as the inner silence of the sea, surveyed him freezingly,as though he were some insolently obtrusive stranger. But her face waspale as that of a corpse.
"Ginevra!" he faltered for the third time, his senses reeling and he nolonger master of himself. "Surely you know me--Eckhardt,--him whosename you have just called! Speak to me, Ginevra--speak! By all thelove I have borne for you--speak, Ginevra,--speak!"
A shadow flitted through the background and paused behind Theodora'scouch. Neither had seen it, though Theodora shuddered as if she hadfelt the strange presence of something uncalled, unbidden.
A strange light of mockery, or of annoyance, gleamed in the woman'seyes. Her crimson lips parted, showing two rows of even, small whiteteeth, then a gleam of amusement shot athwart her face, raising thedelicately pencilled corners of the eye-brows, as she broke into a softpeal of careless mocking laughter.
"I am not Ginevra," she said. "Who is Ginevra? I am Theodora--theQueen of Love."
Again, as she saw his puzzled look, she gave way to her silvery, mockingmirth, while her eyes flung him a glittering challenge to approach.Eckhardt had recovered partial control over his feelings and met hertaunting gaze steadfastly and with something of sadness. His face hadgrown very pale and all the warmth and rapture had died out of hisvoice, when he spoke again.
"I am Eckhardt," he said quietly, with the calm of a madman who arguesfor a fixed idea,--"and you are Ginevra--or her ghost--I know not which.Why did you return to the world from your cold and narrow bed in theearth and shun the man who worships you as one worships an idol? Is itfor some transgression in the flesh that your soul cannot find rest?"
An ominous shuffling behind her caused Theodora to start. She turned herhead as if by chance and when again she faced Eckhardt, she was as paleas death. Noting her momentary embarrassment, Eckhardt made a resolutestep toward her, catching her hands in his own. He was dazed.
"Is this your welcome back in the world, Ginevra?" he pleaded with apassionate whisper. "Have you no thought what this long misery apartfrom you has meant? Remember the old days,--the old love,--havepity--speak to me as of old."
His voice in its very whisper thrilled with the strange music that lovealone can give. His eyes burnt and his lips quivered. Suddenly heseemed to wake to a realization of the scene. He had been mocked by afatal resemblance to his dead wife. His heart was heavy with thecertainty, but the spell remained.
Without warning he threw himself on his knees, holding her unresistinghands in his.
"Demon or Goddess," he faltered, and his voice, even to his own ears,had a strange sound. "What would you have with me? Speak, for whatpurpose did you summon me? Who are you? What do you want with me?"
Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint tuneful echo.
"Foolish dreamer," she murmured half tenderly, half mockingly. "Is itnot enough for you to know that you have been found worthy to join thefew chosen ones to whom this earthly paradise is not a book with sevenseals? Like your sad-eyed, melancholy countrymen, you would analyze theessence of love and try to dissolve it into its own heterogeneousparticles. If you were given the choice of the fairest woman you woulddescend into the mouldering crypts of the past
, to unearth the first andlast Helen of Troy. Ah! Is it not so? You Northmen prefer atheoretical attachment to the body of living, breathing, loving woman?"
He looked at her surprised, perplexed, and paused an instant before hemade reply. Was she mocking him? Did she speak truth?
"Surely so peerless an enchantress, with admirers so numerous, cannotfind it worth her while to add a new worshipper to the idolatrousthrong?" he answered.
"Ah! Little you know," she murmured indolently, with a touch of colddisdain in her accents. "My worshippers are my puppets, my slaves!There is not a man amongst them," she added, raising her voice, "not aman! They kiss the hand that spurns their touch! As for you," sheadded, leaning forward, so that the dark shower of her hair brushed hischeek and her drowsy eyes sank into his own, "As for you--you are fromthe North.--I love a nature of strongly repressed and concentratedpassion, of a proud and chilly temper. Like our volcanoes they wearcrowns of ice, but fires unquenchable smother in their depths.And--might not at a touch from the destined hand the flame in your heartleap forth uncontrolled?"
Eckhardt met the enchantress' look with one of mingled dread andintoxication. She smiled, and raising a goblet of wine to her lips,kissed the brim and gave it to him with an indescribably gracefulswaying gesture of her whole form, which resembled a tall white lilybending to the breeze. He seized the cup eagerly and drank thirstilyfrom it. Again her magic voice, more melodious than the sounds ofAEolian harps thrilled his ears and set his pulses to beating madly.
"But you have not yet told me," she whispered, while her head droopedlower and lower, till her dark fragrant tresses touched his brow, "youhave not yet told me that you love me?"
Was it the purple wine that was so heavy on his senses? Heavier was thedrowsy spell of the enchantress' eyes. Eckhardt started up. His heartached with the memory of Ginevra, and a dull pang shot through his soul.But the spell that was upon him was too heavy to be broken by humaneffort. Nothing short of the thunder of Heaven could save him now.
Theodora's words chimed in his ear, while her hands clasped his own withtheir soft, electrifying touch. With a supreme effort he endeavoured toshake off the spell, into whose ravishment he was being slowly butsurely drawn, his efforts at resistance growing more feeble and feebleevery moment.
Again the voice of the Siren sent its musical cadence through his brainin the fateful question:
"Do you love me?"
Eckhardt attempted to draw back, but could not.
Entwining her body with his arms, he devoured her beauty with his eyes.From the crowning masses of her dusky hair, over the curve of her whiteshoulders and bosom, down to the blue-veined feet in the glisteningsandals, his gaze wandered hungrily, searchingly, passionately. Hisheart beat with wild, mad desire, but, though his lips moved, no wordswere audible.
She too, was silent, apparently watching the effect of her spell uponhim, sure of the ultimate fateful result. In reality she listenedintently, as if expecting some unwelcome intrusion, and once her darkfear-struck eyes tried to penetrate the deep shadows of the grotto. Shehad heard something stir,--and a mad fear had seized her heart.
Eckhardt, unconscious of the woman's misgivings, gazed upon her as onedazed. He felt, if he could but speak the one word, he would be savedand yet--something warned him that, if that word escaped his lips, hewould be lost. Half recumbent on her couch, Theodora watched her victimnarrowly. A smile of delicate derision parted her lips, as she said:
"What ails you? Are you afraid of me? Can you not be happy, Eckhardt,"she whispered into his brain, "happy as other men,--and loved?"
She bent toward him with arms outstretched. Closely she watched hisevery gesture, endeavouring, in her great fear, to read his thoughts.
"I cannot," he replied with a moan, "alas--I cannot!"
"And why not?" the enchantress whispered, bending closer toward him.She must make him her own, she must win the terrible wager; from out ofthe gloom she felt two eyes burning upon her with devilish glee. Shepreferred instant death to a life by the side of him she hated with allthe strength of a woman's hate for the man who has lied to her, deceivedher, and ruined her life. Noting the fateful effect of herblandishments upon him, she threw herself with a sudden movement againstEckhardt's breast, entwining him so tightly with her arms that sheseemed to draw the very breath from him. Her splendid dark eyes, ablazewith passion, sank into his, her lips curved in a sweet, deadly smile.Roused to the very height of delirium, Eckhardt wound his arms roundTheodora's body. A dizziness had seized him. For a momentGinevra--past, present and future seemed forgotten. Closer and closer hefelt himself drawn towards the fateful abyss--slowly the enchantress wasdrawing him onward,--until there would be no more resistance,--allflaming delirium, and eternal damnation.
With one white arm she reached for the goblet, but ere her fingerstouched it, a shadowy hand, that seemed to come from nowhere and belongto no visible body, changed the position of the drinking vessels.Neither noted it. Theodora kissed the brim of the first goblet andstarted to sip from its contents when a sudden pressure on her shouldercaused her to look up. Her terror at what she saw was so great that itchoked her utterance. Two terrible eyes gazed upon her from a white,passion-distorted face, which silently warned her not to drink. So greatwas her terror, that she noticed not that Eckhardt had taken the gobletfrom her outstretched hand, and putting it to his lips on the very placewhere the sweetness of her mouth still lingered, drained it to thedregs.
Wild-eyed with terror she stared at the man before her. A strangesensation had come over him. His brain seemed to be on fire. Hisresistance was vanquished. He could not have gone, had he wished to.
The night was still. The silence was rendered even more profound by therustling of the storm among the leaves.
Suddenly Eckhardt's hand went to his head. He started to rise from hiskneeling position, staggered to his feet, then as if struck by lightninghe fell heavily against the mosaic of the floor.
With a wild shriek of terror, Theodora had risen to her feet--then shesank back on the couch staring speechlessly at what was passing beforeher. The gaunt form of a monk, clad in the habit of the hermits ofMount Aventine, had rushed into the grotto, just as Eckhardt fell fromthe effect of the drug. Lifting him up, as if he were a mere toy, themonk rushed out into the open and disappeared with his burden, whilefour eyes followed him in speechless dread and dismay.