Under the Witches'' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

  CHAPTER III

  THE DREAM LADY OF AVALON

  Like a disk of glowing gold the sun had set upon hilland dale. The gardens of Avalon lay wrapt in the mists of evening. Likeflowers seemed the fair women who thronged the winding paths. Fromfragrant bosquets, borne on the wings of the night wind came the faintsounds of zitherns and lutes.

  He, too, was there, mingling joyous, carefree, with the rest, gatheringthe white roses for the one he loved. Dimly he recalled his delight, ashe saw her approach in the waning light through the dim ilex avenue, anapparition wondrous fair in the crimson haze of slowly departing day,entering his garden of dreams. With strangely aching heart he saw themthrong about her in homage and admiration.

  At last he knelt before her, kissing the white hand that lay passivewithin his own.

  How wonderful she was! Never had he seen anything like her, not evenin this land of flowers and of beautiful women. Her hair was warmas if the sun had entered into it. Her skin had the tints of ivory.The violet eyes with the long drooping lashes seemed to hold thememories of a thousand love thoughts. And the small, crimson mouth, sowitch-like, so alluring, seemed to hold out promise of fulfilment ofdizzy hopes and desires.

  "It is our golden hour," she smiled down at him, and the white fingerstwined the rose in her hair, wove a girdle of blossoms round herexquisite, girlish form.

  To Tristan she seemed an enchantment, an embodied rose. Never had heseen her so fair, so beautiful. On her lips quivered a smile, yet therewas a strange light in her eyes, that gave him pause, a light he hadnever seen therein before.

  She beckoned him away from the throng. "Come where the moonlightdreams."

  Her smile and her wonderful eyes were his beacon light. He rose to hisfeet and took her hand. And away they strayed from the rest of thecrowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, hereand there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silverybrightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted.Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows ofthe grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side.

  "This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest--forawhile--far from the world."

  They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses andhyacinths and fragrant shrubs--a very paradise for lovers.--

  The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silencewith their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in thedistance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky.

  When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke.

  "How wonderful is this peace!"

  Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart.

  As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out hishands entreatingly.

  "Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer--"

  She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stonebench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under thisnew light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion ofthe afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as ifshadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared notapproach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in hereyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight.

  He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supremeimpulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words thathovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he lovedso well? Was it some dark power he wot not of?

  At last he broke through his restraint.

  "Hellayne--" he whispered low. "Hellayne--I love you!"

  She did not move.

  There was a deep silence.

  Then she answered.

  "Oh, why have you said the word!"

  What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he wasno longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in adense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that hesaw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks.

  Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through theinterwoven branches.

  She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made aquick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm.

  "Let us go, Tristan!" she said.

  "My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into theeyes that held a night of mystery.

  "You have it," she said calmly.

  "It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover--"

  "Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had nevernoted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers.--Look!"

  And he looked.

  Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of athreatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changingshapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowyform, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.

  He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shapewhich he knew, yet knew not.

  He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own andpressed upon them his fevered lips.

  "I do not understand--" he moaned.

  She regarded him fixedly.

  "I am another's wife--"

  His head drooped.

  "When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you mightfind response in your heart," he said, still holding on to thosemarvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?"

  She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And hecovered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outbursthad died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously.

  "Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to dothat which she must. "Tristan, this may not be."

  "I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shallever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart--soulof my soul?--What must I do, to win you for my own--to give youhappiness?"

  A negative gesture came in response.

  "Is sin ever happiness?"

  "The priests say not! And yet--our love is not sinful--"

  "The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly.

  He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres,suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomlessabyss of despair.

  Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyesfastened upon him in a compelling gaze.

  "Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomablewells of dreams. "When love is with you--does aught matter? Doessin--discovery--God himself--matter?"

  With a frightened cry she drew back.

  But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled theshifting violet orbs.

  "Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face.

  "Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell.

  Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon thewoods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillnessof a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snappedbeneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strongarms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered hiscaresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck.

  Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone.

  In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless,stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared atthem. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passedthrough Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over theman's face. No features were visible.

  And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyesthat had surprised their tryst.

  It was Count Roger de Laval.

  The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come.

  It was growing ever darker in the forest, and whe
n he looked up againhe saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Herscarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted itand pressed it to his lips.

  "Will you give it to me?" he said tremulously. "That it may be with mealways--"

  There was no immediate response.

  At last she said slowly:

  "You shall have it--a parting gift--"

  He seized her hands. They lay passively within his own.

  There was a great fear in his eyes.

  "I do not understand--"

  She loosened the roses from her hair and garb before she made reply.Silently, like dead leaves in autumn, the fragrant petals dropped oneby one to earth. Hellayne watched them with weary eyes as they driftedto their sleep, then, as she held the last spray in her hand, gazingupon it she said:

  "When you gave them to me, Tristan, they were sweet and fresh, thefairest you could find. Now they have faded, perished, died--"

  He started to plead, to protest, to silence her, but she continued:

  "Ah! Can you not see? Can you not understand? Perchance," she addedbitterly, "I was created to adorn the fleeting June afternoon of yourlife, and when this scarf is torn and faded as these flowers, let thewind carry it away,--like these dead petals at our feet--"

  She let fall the withered spray, but he snatched it ere it touched theground.

  "I love you," he stammered passionately. "I love you! Love you as nowoman was ever loved. You are my world--my fate-- Hellayne! Hellayne!Know you what you say?"--

  She gazed at him, with eyes from which all life had fled.

  "I am another's," she said slowly. "I have sinned in loving you, ingiving to you my soul. And even as you stood there and held me in yourarms, it flashed upon me, like lightning in a dark stormy night--I sawthe abyss, at the brink of which we stand, both, you and I."--

  "But we have done no wrong--we have not sinned," he protested wildly.

  She silenced him with a gesture of her beautiful hands.

  "Who may command the waters of the cataract, go here,--or go there?Who may tell them to return to their lawful bed? I have neither powernor strength, to resist your pleading. You have been life and love tome, all,--all,--and all this you are to-day. And therefore must wepart,--part, ere it be too late--" she concluded with a wild cry ofanguish, "ere we are both engulfed in the darkness."--

  And he fell at her feet as if stunned by a thunderbolt.

  "Do not send me away--" he pleaded, his voice choked with anguish. "Donot send me from you."

  "You will go," she said softly, deaf to his prayers. "It is the supremetest of your love, great as I know it is."

  "But I cannot leave you, I cannot go, never to see you more--" and hegrasped the cool white hands of the woman as a drowning man will graspa straw.

  She did not attempt, for the time, to take them from him. She lookeddown upon him wistfully.

  "Would you make me the mock of Avalon?" she said. "Once my lordsuspects we are lost. And, I fear, he does even now. For his gaze hasbeen dark and troubled. And I cannot, will not, expose you to hiscruelty. You know him not as I do--"

  "Even therefore will I not leave you," he interposed, looking intothe sweet face. "He has not been kind to you. His pride was flatteredby your ready surrender, and your great beauty is but one of the manydishes that go to satiate his varied appetites. Of the others you knownaught--"

  She gave a shrug.

  "If it be so," she said wearily, "so let it be. Nevertheless, I knowwhereof I speak. This thing has stolen over us like a madness. And,like a madness, it will hurl us to our doom."

  Though he had seen the dark, glowering face among the branches, hesaid nothing, not to alarm her, not to cause her fear and misgiving.He loved her spotless purity as dearly as herself. To him they wereinseparable.

  His head fell forward on her hands. Her fingers played in his softbrown hair.

  "What would you have me do?" he said, his voice choked by his anguish.

  "Go on a pilgrimage to Rome, to obtain forgiveness, as I shall visitthe holy shrines of Mont Beliard and do likewise," she said, steadyingher voice with an effort. "Let us forget that we have ever met--that wehave ever loved,--or remember that we loved--a dream."--

  "Can love forget so readily?" he said, bitter anguish and reproach inhis tones.

  She shook her head.

  "It is my fate,--for better--or worse--no matter what befall. As foryou--life lies before you. Love another, happier woman, one that isfree to give--and to receive. As for me--"

  She paused and covered her face with her hands.

  "What will you do?" he cried in his over-mastering anguish.

  A faint, far-off voice made reply.

  "I shall do that which I must!"

  He staggered away from her. She should not see the scalding tears thatcoursed down his cheeks. But, as he turned, he again saw the dark andglowering face, the brow gloomy as a thunder-cloud, of the Countde Laval. But again it was not he. It was the black-garbed, lithestranger, the companion of the hunchback, who was regarding Hellaynewith evil, leering eyes.

  He wanted to cry out, warn her, entreat her to fly.--

  But it was too late.

  Like a bird that watches spellbound the approach of the snake, Hellaynestood pale and trembling--her cheeks white as death--her eyes rivetedon the evil shape that seemed the fiend. But he, Tristan, also wasencompassed by the same spell. He could not move--he could not cry out.With a bound, swift and noiseless as the panther's, he saw the sinewystranger hurl himself upon Hellayne, picking her up like a feather anddisappear in the gloom of the forest.

  With a cry of horror, bathed from head to foot in perspiration, Tristanstarted from his slumber.

  The moonbeams flooded the chamber. The soft breeze of the summer nightstole through the open casement.

  With a moan as of mortal pain he sat up and looked about.

  Was he indeed in Rome?

  Had it been but a dream, this echo of the past, this visualized partingfrom the woman he had loved better than life?

  Was he indeed in Rome, to do as she had bid him do, not in the misty,flower-scented rose-gardens of Avalon in far Provence?--

  And she--Hellayne--where was she at this hour?

  Tristan stroked his clammy brow with a hot, dry hand. For a moment thememories evoked by the magic wand of the God of Sleep seemed to banishall consciousness of the present. He cast a fleeting, bewildered glanceat the dim, distant housetops, then fell back among his cushions,his lips muttering the name of her who had filled his dream with hernever-to-be-forgotten presence, wondering and questioning if theywould ever meet again. Thus he tossed and tossed.

  After a time he became still.

  Once again consciousness was blotted out and the dream realm reignedsupreme.