The Hill of Venus
flowers bloomed, where strange birds sang. Beneath the sunken light of
a seared moon we walked hand in hand."--
A great wave of misery swept over him.
"I love you,--I love you," he whispered hoarsely. "Heart of my heart,
that is the tale, a tale of three words, which is yet larger than any
tale that was ever said or sung. Do you know what this must mean to
you and me?"
She drew herself away from him.
"You love me," she repeated, not questioningly, but as one stating a
fact. "Yet such love is not for you and me! All men, all circumstances
would try to part us!"
"But why? But why?" he cried. "Ilaria, I love you with a love that
must last through life and death and all that lies beyond. So, since I
am what I must be, I place my life into your hands for good or evil."
He kissed her, then looked hungrily into her eyes.
She gave a wan smile.
"Dear, do not grieve!" she said. "I have always loved you, love you
now and think it no shame. Had you consented to become my lover, the
man I love had died! What I love best in you, is what held you far!"
"Ilaria!" he cried, loosening the horses' reins, "what is there
between you and Stefano Maconi?"
She breathed hard, and her face was very pale.
"I too might have found forgetfulness where others find. That path was
not for me. Francesco!" She laid her hand upon his own. "Look in my
eyes and see!"
That night they stopped at a wayside inn, as brother and sister,
Francesco keeping watch outside, while Ilaria occupied the only
guest-chamber of the tavern.
Francesco's eyes stayed with her darkly, sadly, after she had gone
inside. His tragic face seemed to look out of the night like the face
of one dead.
He had tethered their horses some distance away, so that the
occasional tramp of their hoofs should fall muffled on the air. The
deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a
quiet destiny. The thin, pale face, white in its meditative repose,
seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land.
It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed
what he held to be truth, like a shadow; who had found the light of
life in a woman's eyes, and saw that light slowly go out and vanish in
outer darkness.
There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that
was pleading with death. The face would have seemed stern, but for a
certain something that made its shadows kind.
The woods about him seemed to swim in a mist of silver.
Thus he sat through the night. He saw the moon go down in the west.
Nothing earthly could come into the sad session of remembrances, the
vigil of a dead past.--
The early dawn found them again upon the road.
The evening of another day descended; the green valleys were full of
light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome,
touching the transient crimson of the west. Ilex and cedar stood,
sombre giants, in a golden, shimmering sea. The eastern slopes gleamed
in the sun, a cataract of leaves, plunging into gloom. The forests
were full of shadows and mysterious streams of gold, and a great
silence shrouded the wilderness, save for the distant thunder of the
streams.
Whenever Ilaria had grown tired, they had stopped in the shelter of
the giant oaks, and partaken of the refreshments which Francesco had
taken along. At high-noon they had reached what appeared to be a
deserted castle, situated in the midst of a flowery oasis. Here they
had dismounted and Ilaria had found great delight in roaming through
the enchanted wilderness, calling each flower by its name and, now and
then, referring to the old rose-garden at Avellino, those happy days
of their guileless youth. Francesco's heart was heavy within him as he
watched the girlish figure, over whom sorrow had passed with so loving
a hand, idealizing and etherealizing her great beauty, never dimming
her sweet eyes. Then he had led their steeds down to the stream, which
purled through the underbrush, and while they drank, he had seated
himself on the bank and buried his head in his hands.
As he came from watering his horses at the stream, he heard the sound
of her footsteps amid the vines and pomegranates, chanting some
sorrowful legend of lost love. Francesco had discovered a rough bridge
across the stream, where giant boulders seemed to have been set as
stepping-stones between the western grass-land and the castle. There
was a narrow postern giving entrance through the walls. Francesco
stood at the gate and listened. Above the thunder of the foaming
streams her voice seemed to rise; even the great golden vault of
heaven seemed full of the echoes of her passionate song.
He found Ilaria seated on the terrace-way, where the oleanders
bloomed. Under the stone bridge the water foamed and purled, the ferns
and the moss green and brilliant above the foam. About her rose the
knolls of the gold-fruited trees. Further the forests climbed into the
glory of the heavens.
She ceased her chanting as Francesco came to her and made room for him
on the long bench of stone. There was a tinge of petulance about the
red mouth, the pathetic perverseness of a heart that loved not by the
will of circumstance. Ilaria was as a woman deceived by dreams. She
had loved a dream, and since fate bowed not to her desire, she turned
her back in anger upon the world.
How Francesco loved her, she knew full well. Yet she could not forget
that he had chosen the garb he wore rather than herself. Her very love
for him stiffened her perverseness and caused her to delight in
torturing him.
Francesco sat on the stone seat and looked up at her with questioning
gaze. To Ilaria there was a love therein such as only once comes into
a woman's life, yet the look troubled her. She feared its appeal,
feared the weakening of her own resolve.
"Francesco," she said at last.
He took her hand, his eyes fixed solemnly upon the face he loved so
well.
"You will return to Naples?" she queried with a show of indifference.
"Naples is far from me as yet," he said with bowed head.
"Let me not hinder you,--since go you must."--
"Are you so anxious to be relieved of me?" he said bitterly.
"The fate of Conradino,--the fate of our friends hang in the balance."
"I could not save them single-handed, though I would!"
"Yet save them you must! You must redeem your past,--for my sake! Why
not part here, since part we must? There are other claims upon my
soul!"
"Raniero Frangipani still lives--"
"I shall never return to him!"
He did not answer her for a moment. Her eyes were troubled, she looked
as one whose thoughts were buffeted by a strong wind. Above them the
zenith mellowed to a deeper gold, and they had the noise of the waters
in their ears.
"Ilaria," he said at last, "what would you with me? Am I not pledged
to guard your life,--your honor?"
"Ah," she said, drooping her lashes, "I shall not clog your years!
The springtime of life has passed,--for each of us!"
"But not my love for you!" he cried fiercely, with the tone of a man
tortured by suspense.
Ilaria looked at him, and she saw the love upon his face, like a
sunset streaming through a cloud. She pitied him for a moment, but
hardened her heart the more.
"I am weary of the world," she said.
"Weary, Ilaria? Are you not free?"
She looked at him quizzically.
"The wife of Raniero Frangipani?"
"Have you not broken the chains?"
"Mine the forging--mine the suffering," she said, almost with a moan.
"Though I have left him, I am not free. Nor are you! Though you burn
your garb--you are forever a monk--the slave of Rome! Who is free in
life?" she added, after a brief pause. "I am fearful of the ruffian
passions of the world,--the lusts and the terrors,--even love itself!
Life seethes with turbulence and the great throes of wrath. I would be
at peace,--I have suffered--God, how I have suffered!"
Francesco rose up suddenly, and began to stride to and fro before her.
He loved Ilaria, he knew it at this moment, with all the strongest
fibres of his heart. He had hoped too much, trusted too much to the
power of his own faith. He turned and faced her, there, outwardly
calm, miserable within.
"Must this thing be?" he asked her.
There was such deep wistfulness in those words of his that she bent
her head and would not look into his face.
"Francesco," she said, "I pray you, plead no further with my heart. I
shall turn nun,--there is the truth."
"As you will--" he said, and a cord seemed to snap in his heart. "It
is not for me to parley with your soul, not for me to revive a past
that had best never been!"
Ilaria's gaze seemed far away. Her eyes, under their dark lashes,
seemed like spring violets hiding in shadows.
There was an infinite pride, an infinite tenderness in the wistful
face, as she turned to Francesco.
"Ah," she said with a sudden kindling, "why has it been decreed thus?
I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for
fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer,--dreaming
still, after the devastating storms of life have spent themselves over
my head,--but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests,
marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the
wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see the sea, one laugh of
gold. Now, every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. Yet I can still
sing to the stars at night, songs such as the woods weave from the
voice of a gentle wind, dew-laden, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel
faint for sheer love of this fair earth."
Francesco's eyes were on her with a strange, deep look. Every fibre of
his being, every hidden instinct cried out in him to fold her in his
arms, to hold her there forevermore, safe from the world, from harm.
But, as if she had divined his thoughts, she drew away from him.
He stood motionless, with head thrown back, his eyes gazing upon the
darkening windows of the east. The sound of the running waters surged
in his ears; the colors and odors of the place seemed to faint into
the night. As for Ilaria, she stared immovable into space.
At last she turned to Francesco.
"And are they all,--all lost?"
His lips hardened.
"All, save the lords of Astura."
Her face was pale as death.
Francesco took her hands in his, bent over them and kissed them
passionately.
A soft light shone in her eyes; yet underneath there was that
inexplicable perverseness in her heart that at certain moments makes a
woman treacherous to her own desires.
And Ilaria, as if to inflict a mortal wound on him she loved best,
beckoned her own fate on with a bitterness that Francesco could not
fathom.
"Listen," she said. "You will go to Naples,--you may be of service to
the Swabian cause,--I must not--I will not--detain you,--besides,--I
am weary of the world,--I am weary of it all! Take me to San Nicandro
by the Sea--there I shall strive to forget!"
Francesco watched her, listening like a man to the reading of his own
doom. Ilaria did not look at him. Her head was bowed down. And as he
sat there, gazing on the face he so passionately loved, her eyes, her
lips, Francesco could hardly restrain himself from putting his arms
about her and holding her close, close to his heart. But an icy hand
seemed to come between them, seemed to hold them apart.
"I will do as you wish!" he said.
The west was an open gate of gold. The darkening forests were wreathed
in veils of mist. The island with the dark foliage of its trees and
shrubs, lay like some dusky emerald sewn on the bosom of a sable
robe.
CHAPTER II
MEMORIES
How the birds sang that evening when the saffron afterglow had fainted
over the forest spires, and when all was still with the hush of night,
how the cry of a nightingale thrilled from a tree near the cottage!