"A revelation."
"You jeer."
"Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb."
"Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is an error to close up grief in the casket of self."
Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of the night. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, he delivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristic confessions that were wholly logical.
"I am a selfish vagabond," he said; "I appeal to Peter"s keys whether all ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others.
The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generous justice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an iron sceptre. There, you have my creed."
"And G.o.d?" she asked him.
"Is a most useful subordinate."
"You do not mean that?"
"I do not."
She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her own home flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faith and devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeance beaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.
"It is G.o.d"s war," she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding in her voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"
"Enough," he answered her.
"And the rest?"
"G.o.d shall make all plain in due season."
Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle"s towers still netted the moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strode down in mult.i.tudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm, with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. The world seemed roofed with a dome of dusky steel.
Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Around climbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn and tumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley.
Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left, from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, its boughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves.
The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier that glistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews cast their gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyard stretched out its mossy arms east and west.
The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pines by the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland pa.s.sed up through weeds and brambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening with a th.o.r.n.y web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. The tiled floor was choked with gra.s.s; a rickety door drooped rotten on its rusty hinges.
Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all was ruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the cas.e.m.e.nts broken.
"We must find harbour here," said the man, "our horses go far to-morrow."
"A cheerful hostel, this."
"Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I"ll see to that."
"No. I am hungry."
The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east, where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There was a great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed as though giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow, with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about its steps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooring still stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom came in with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He also gave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.
"We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging," he said to her; "wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."
She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, ranged it with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.
"And you?" she said to Fulviac.
"Damian and I hold the porch."
"You will be cold."
"I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!"
He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closed the rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered ba.s.sinet and a frayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviac gestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of the chapel, where laurels grew thick and l.u.s.ty about the walls. When he returned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner of the porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message into his master"s ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.
An hour pa.s.sed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vast quiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In the sky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes.
In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.
An owl"s cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as though dropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air.
It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, as of some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, and viol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magic of the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descend the burning stair of heaven.
A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from the altar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over the broken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the cas.e.m.e.nts.
The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heard crying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanct.i.ty.
It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glow elapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured in silver omnipotence over the ruin.
From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones.
A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. The girl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced in the shadow.
"Fulviac."
Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and whispering, strained as the overwrought strings of a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak, calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself, as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groom still crouched in the dark corner.
"Fulviac."
She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood had fallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of a supernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shock of awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held her arm.
"Speak. What has chanced to you?"
She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice of G.o.d. Her hands were torn and b.l.o.o.d.y from the thorns.
"The Virgin has appeared to me."
"Are you mad?"
"The Virgin."
"Some ghost or phantom."
"No, no, hear me."