The Hill of Venus
mystic reverence which he sought to cultivate towards his lady flashed
the allurement of the senses, and an occasional pang of reproach for
his own cowardly surrender. He reproached himself bitterly for it, as
he rode down the long hill that stretched in uneven rise and fall from
Tivoli to Bracciano. Not that it troubled him, to find in his own love
an earthly taint; many he knew who had struggled, had conquered, not
without salt-tears. But to distrust the brightness of his lady's
image; this surely in the annals of high love was a crime
unparalleled. He tried to cast the evil thought aside, to exalt at
once his love and his ideal. Breathing the morning air, the thing
seemed possible. The situation helped; delicate enough to tickle his
sense of honor, dramatic enough to absorb fancy.
The Ilaria of the ilex-wood grew dim as a fading fresco to Francesco's
memory. He saw in her stead the little maid of the old castle of
Avellino, whose waywardness, whose bright and ready gaiety had seemed
to his more despondent temperament a gift of enchanting sweetness.
Thinking of these things, dubious traits vanished from her image; she
shone before his eyes, the piteous lady of his desire, and the
devotion for which he longed rose ardent within him. It brought a
fulness to the throat, to the eyes a smart which he coaxed into a
tear. Then he rode on in a happier mood. The dark trees, which crowned
the hill, were giving way as he descended to a wood of fresher green.
It was now verging towards evening. Francesco had reached the top of a
lower ridge, from which the towers of Camaldoli, seen through a gap in
the trees, rose shadowy against the fading blue of the horizon. The
path, hardly more than a foottrail, had been lonely. Now a priest came
ambling up on mule-back, feasting his eyes on the pleasant woodland.
At the sight of Francesco he dropped them on his breviary, and passed
on without word or sign.
For a moment the action struck him as a smart.
The sight of the Office-book had opened the door of another chamber in
the house of Mind, that mysterious dwelling which always numbers rooms
which the owner has never entered, and others, closed in long disuse.
At that moment the faint spark of devotion passed into a large
indifference. In his early youth Francesco had been in the habit--how
acquired he could not have told--of repeating, whenever possible, the
canonical hours. He had long abandoned the custom, as far as intention
went; yet in some forgotten chapel of the mind, deserted of the
conscious powers, the holy rites go on forever, biding the time of
their recall. He was as one in the grip of a bitter wrong; for
through the jostling images which filled his mind, the Office
continued to ring in persistent undertones.
The light between the great tree trunks grew from splendor to
splendor; flashing its level glories through the forest, transfiguring
the wood into flame. The sun had reached the rim of the horizon. Some
far memory of brilliance was stirring and seeking. A pageant, withal,
but not that triumph of earthly love, so fair in the false twilight of
a night in the past, so wizened gray and lustful red in the light of
recollection. The beams of the sinking sun were seven candle-sticks of
gold. What noble elders follow, crowned with fleurs-de-lis? What
mystic chariot was this, within which rides a woman olive-garlanded,
robed in hues of living fire and of the fresh spring grass? Memory
found what it sought: but he who thus looked back into the past was
unaware that neither Lethe nor Eunoe might be his, who had not yet
climbed the Purgatorial Mound.
The sun was sinking in the west when Francesco came to a ridge in the
woodland, which sloped southward from the high rocks. The path seemed
to lead into the heart of a wilderness. Pine woods bordered it and
dead bracken and whortleberry spread away under the stiff shadows of
the silent trees. A thousand spires began to blacken against the
sunset, and Francesco was aware that he was carrying a savage hunger.
He had hoped for a manor-house or inn, or some woodman's lodge, but
the brambles that had rooted their long feelers across the path made
it appear that the track had not been used for years. So rough and
tangled did it become that Francesco turned in among the trees, where
the dense summer foliage of the beeches had kept the ground clear of
brush and bramble.
The prospect of a supperless night under the trees, even though he had
never been clogged with heavy feeding at the monastery, made
Francesco's thoughts hark back to the inn he had left at Viterbo, and
he regretted not having supplied himself with a stock of provisions
ere he departed. Suddenly a distant sound made him pause and listen.
The sound had a human note, and seemed nearer to him than he had at
first imagined. He urged his steed on through the on-coming dusk. It
was not long before the trees thinned before him and streams of golden
light, slanting into an open space, gave the clearing the appearance
of a forest-chapel at sunset.
From the open ground ahead came the incessant babbling of a thin and
querulous voice, that faltered between the prattling of a child and
the chatter of a mad soul, talking to the empty air. Sometimes there
was a croon in the voice, sometimes a touch of decrepit anger.
A long, green bank, brushed by the boughs of the beech-trees, hid from
Francesco the open ground that lay ahead of him. But, though it hid
what he desired to see, the bank gave him the chance of approaching
unobserved. Dismounting, he went up it on hands and knees, and
insinuated a cautious head between the turf and the branches of the
beeches.
On the other side of the bank lay a stretch of undulating grass, that
rose into mounds and ridges, and dipped into shallow dykes, the mounds
and ridges catching the fading sunlight, the hollows lying filled with
the shadows. The trunks of the forest-trees shut in this open space on
every side as with a palisade. On a mound in the centre stood crags of
ruined masonry smothered in ivy, a broken squint in the wall looking
like a rent in a cloud, through which the sunlight slanted.
A little old woman, with hair as white as snow, and strange black eyes
in a strange and wrinkled face, knelt there, polishing something
smooth and round that she held in her lap. The strange sight caused
Francesco to peer all the more intently, and he drew back with a quick
gasp, when in the suddenly revealed white dome of the head, the
shadowy eye-sockets, the glistening teeth in the bare jaws, he
recognized the thing for what it was,--the head of a skeleton.
As he sat there, considering the strange picture, Francesco for a time
became oblivious of the cravings of his stomach. It was plain that the
woman was mad, for as she polished the skull, she chattered
incessantly. He asked himself, what was behind this madness. Death had
been here at some time, perhaps with violence, wiping out life and
reason, leaving white hair and tragic madness in its wake. The furrows
deepened above Francesco's eyes. He sat there in the deepening dusk
calling up visions of ruffianism and wrong; the vision of this poor
soul's madness made him forget the dangers of the woods by night.
Picking his way cautiously among the trees, he came within about five
paces of her, before she lifted her head and saw him. Then he crossed
himself and gave her a "Pax Dei."--
The little old woman stared at him and said nothing, her lower lip
drooping, her inert hands resting on the top of the skull.
Her eyes puzzled Francesco, they were so black and bright, like the
eyes of a bird. There was a startled wonder in them, as though she had
never seen such a creature before. Then she suddenly wrapped the head
in a bright-colored scarf which lay by her side, arose, and started
through the thicket, putting her arms around the thing as a mother
would hold a child.
The sun was now below the hills and the woods were turning black.
Francesco felt a vague shudder go through him as, following the woman,
he arrived at the fragments of a ruin, that was smothered up in ivy.
An arched doorway with broken pillars led into a vault in which there
stood an open coffin. He saw her approach the receptacle for the dead,
place the skull in the coffin and close the lid. Then she crooned
softly to herself and hobbled away into the dusk.
The thought that there must be a hut close by, struck Francesco with
the pang of the returning consciousness of hunger, when suddenly he
saw a light gleaming through the night as from a blood-red star.
Straining his eyes, he peered through the dusk in the direction whence
the light shone.
Under the shadow of a wooded spur that ran down into the valley
Francesco saw a tower rising from an island in the centre of one of
the great pools, of which the region abounded.
The walls of the tower shone crimson in the light of the rising moon,
glowing above the black water as though it had been built of iron at
red heat. Thousands of willows and aspens grew about the mere, and in
the shallows were sedges and sword-leaved flags.
Remounting his steed, Francesco resolved to ask for food and a night's
lodging, rather than to traverse the forests at night. He was spent,
and so was his steed, and the region was infested by all manner of
outlaws, who made the roads insecure. As he approached the mere, a
large boat put out from a water-gate and crawled with long oars, like
a beetle on the surface of the water. It disappeared in the night, and
Francesco decided to hail it upon its return, in the meanwhile
watching the red tower overhanging the pool. The reflection of the
walls in the rippling waters was a broken redness wrinkling into
black.
Francesco's wait was destined to be brief. The barge soon returned,
and hailing the astonished oarsmen, he requested to be rowed across
the mere. They seemed to hold silent council, then, seeing it was but
one man, they grumblingly ran out planks for Francesco's horse, and he
rode into the barge, remaining in the saddle and caressing his steed's
black ears.
At the water-gate a lean man in a black tunic stood waiting. He gave
the newcomer the blind stare of two watery eyes and, upon learning his
request, disappeared inside of the tower. After a wait of brief
duration he returned, and, beckoning to Francesco to enter the dark
gateway, called to some attendant, who took charge of his horse and
then led the guest to a dimly lighted chamber, in which he discovered
the forms of a woman and a man. As Francesco appeared on the
threshold, the man precipitately arose and, whispering a few words in
the woman's ear, retreated by an opposite door. Francesco was so
absorbed in the scrutiny of his surroundings, that he paid little heed
to the action of the one of the occupants. The castellan ushered him
into the chamber, closing the door behind him, and Francesco, making
the best of a strange situation, approached the woman, who, reclining
upon a dais, was regarding him intently, and preferred his request for
a night's hospitality.
"Our guest-table waits for strangers," she replied with a smile,
bidding Francesco to take the seat vacated by the former occupant,
then regarding him with unconcealed interest.
For a moment Francesco was mute; the suddenness of the transition
deprived him of speech. Perhaps it was also her complete fearlessness
of manner, bare of every trace of aloofness, which had a somewhat
disconcerting effect upon one who had not known woman's society in a
long space of time, which caused the consciously awkward silence, as
now and then their eyes met.
Her face had a singular charm. The lips were thin, tinged slightly
with scorn, yet tender when she smiled. The eyes were large, of
greenish hue, and strange lights seemed to flash from their depths.