The Hill of Venus
The glamor of the day had passed, and now what mockery and bitterness
came with the cold, unimpassioned light of the moon! Ilaria tossed and
turned on her couch like one taken with a fever; her brain seemed
afire, her hair like so much shadow about her head. As she lay staring
with wide, wakeful eyes, the birds' song mocked her to the echo; the
scent of rose and honeysuckle floated in like a sad savor of death,
and the moonlight seemed to watch her without a quaver of pity. Her
heart panted in the darkness; she was torn by the thousand torments of
a troubled conscience; wounded to tears, yet her eyes were dry and
waterless as a desert. Raniero's face seemed to glare down on her out
of the dusky gloom, and she could have cried out with the fear that
lay like an icy hand over her bosom.
How her heart wailed for Francesco; how she longed for the touch of
his hand. God of heaven, she could not let him go again and starve her
soul with the old, cursed life. His lips had touched hers; his arms
had held her close; she had felt the warmth of his body, and the
beating of his heart. Was all this nothing,--a dream, a splendid
phantasm, to be rent away like a crimson cloud? Was she to be
Raniero's wife despite of all, a bitter flower growing up under a
gallows?
God of heaven, no! What had the world done for her, that she should
obey its edicts, and suffer for its tyrannies? Raniero had cheated her
of her youth, her happiness; let him pay the price to the fates! What
honor, indeed, had she to preserve for him? If he was a brute piece of
lust, a tyrant, a traitor, so much the better! It would ease her
conscience. She owed him no fealty, no marriage vow! Her body was no
more his than was her soul, and a dozen priests and a dozen masses
might as well marry ice to fire! How could a fool in a cape and frock,
by gabbling a service, bind an irresponsible woman to the man she
hated with a hatred enduring as the stars? It was a stupendous piece
of nonsense, to say the least of it. No God calling himself a just
God, could hold such a bargain holy.
And then the truth! What a stumbling-block truth was on occasions. She
knew Francesco's fine sensibilities, and his very love for her made
him the victim of an ethical tyranny. And again! For all her passion
and the fire of her rebellious heart she was not a woman who could
fling reason to the winds and stifle up her conscience with a kiss.
Besides, she loved Francesco to the very zenith of her soul. To have a
lie understood upon her lips, to be shamed before the man's eyes, were
things that scourged her in fancy even more than the thought of losing
him. She trembled when she thought how he might look at her in the
days to come, if a passive lie were proven against her with open
shame.
And Francesco was a monk! He might break the shackles, defy the powers
of the Church,--he was a monk nevertheless! It might be possible that
his love proved stronger than his reason; it was possible that he
might face the world and frown down the petty judgments of men!
Glorious and transcendent sacrifice! She could face calumny beside
him, as a rock faces the froth of the waves, she could look Raniero
in the eye and know neither pity nor shame.
Her mood that night was like the passage of a blown leaf, tossed up to
heaven, whirled over the tree-tops, driven down again into the mire.
Strong woman that she was, her very strength made the struggle more
indecisive and more racking. She could not renounce Francesco for the
great love she bore him; and yet she could not will to play a false
part by reason of this same great love! Her soul, like a wanderer in
the wilds, halted and wavered between two tracks that led forward into
the unknown.
As she tossed and tossed and thought of her life in Astura, her face
became hard as stone. Even since they had journeyed from Naples,
Ilaria had been conscious of a change. Her face showed melancholy,
mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression in the
old days, within the walls of Avellino. For a time hope had waited
wide-eyed in her heart. She had conjured up love like some Eastern
house of magic, only to see its domes faint away into the gloom of
night. The past was as a wounded dream to her! Her eyes had hungered
for a face, grieving in dark reserve and silence. Her love, once
forged, could bend to no new craft.
After the barren months at Astura, the long bondage of hate, Francesco
had come into her life again. He had come to her with a glory of love
in his eyes, he had taken her hands and kissed them, as though there
were no such divine flesh in the whole wide world. How wonderful it
was, to be touched so, to have such eyes pouring out so strong a soul
before her face; to know the presence of a great love and to feel the
echoing passion of it in her own heart!
Was this faery time but for an hour, a day, and no longer? Was she but
to see the man's face, to feel the touch of his hands, the grand calm
of his love, before losing him, perhaps for life? Her heart fluttered
in her like a smitten bird. Could she but creep to him, where he lay,
touch his hands, his lips! Her eyes stared out in the night with a
starved frenzy.
"Francesco! Francesco!"--
It was like the wild cry of a woman over her dead love.
A wind had arisen. The thousand voices of the trees seemed to call to
her with a weird, perpetual clamor. She saw their spectral hands
jerking and clutching against the sky. The wind was crying through the
trees, swaying them restlessly against the starry sky, making
plaintive moan through all the myriad aisles.
How many a heart trembles with the return of day! What fears rise with
the first blush of light in the purple bowl of night! To Ilaria the
dawn would come as a message of misery; she dared not think what the
coming hours would bring.
At last she closed her weary eyes, and under the sheer weight of her
own grief fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, while the gloom was
growing less and less, and dawn, like a pale phantom, stalked out of
the east.
CHAPTER III
THE GRAIL OF LOVE
Francesco was astir early with the coming of the dawn. The grass was
drenched with dew, the woods towered heavenwards with a thousand
golden peaks. In the valleys the stream echoed back the light.
Francesco was very solemn about the eyes. He looked as one who took
little joy in life, but worked to forget and to ease his heart of its
great pain. He watched the sun climb over the leafy hills, saw the
clouds trend the heavens, heard the thunder of the streams. There was
life in the day and wild love in the woods. Yet from this world of
passion and delight he was as an exile, rather a pilgrim, fettered by
a heavy vow. He was to bear the Grail of Love through all these wilds,
yet might never look thereon, nor quench his thirst.
He met Ilaria in the garden, took her head between his hands, and
kissed her upon the lips. She clung close to him and smiled, yet her
looks were distraught; she seemed fearful of looking in his eyes.
"I have saddled the horses," he said laconically.
She read the heroism in his heart; the bitterness of the faith she
compelled from him. The truth troubled and shamed her.
Francesco strapped the wallet and water flask to his saddle and
lifted Ilaria to her steed. Then they crossed the stream and, riding
northwards, plunged into the woods.
All that day Francesco strove and struggled with his youth, his heart
beating fast and loud under his steel-hauberk. Love was at his side,
robed in crimson and green; Ilaria's hair blinded him more than the
noon-brightness of the sun. And as for her eyes, he dared not look
therein, lest they should tempt him to deceive his honor. The silence
enfolded them as though they were half fearful of each other's
thoughts.
Francesco spoke little, keeping his distance, as though mistrusting
his own tongue. As for Ilaria, the same passionate perverseness
possessed her heart, and, though she pitied Francesco, she pitied him
silently and from afar.
The following night they lodged in a beech wood, where dead leaves
spread a dry carpet under the boughs. Francesco made a bed of leaves
at the foot of a great tree. He spread a cloak underneath for Ilaria's
comfort, then started away, as though to increase the distance between
them.
"Francesco!" she cried suddenly, looking slantwise at his face.
He turned and stood waiting.
"You have given me your cloak!"
"It will keep the chill air from you!"
"What of yourself?"
"I shall not need it!" he said. "I shall not sleep to-night. I will
keep watch and guard you! Have no fear!"
She sighed and hung her head as she sat down at the foot of the tree.
Francesco's deep and unselfish love shamed her more and more. Yet his
very patience with her hardened her discontent. Had he rebelled and
conquered her against her will, she would have followed him to the
ends of the earth.
Francesco, with a last look, left her there and strode away to a point
where he might see, though not speak to her. A full moon climbed in
the east and the wide lands were smitten with her mystery. The
valleys were as lakes of glimmering mist, the hills like icy pinnacles
gleaming towards the stars. The forest glades were white under the
moon; the trees tall, sculptured obelisks, their trunks as of ebony
inlaid with pearl wherever the moonlight splashed the bark. The
silence of the wilderness was as the silence of a windless sea.
Francesco wandered in the woods, his heart full of the strange,
haunting beauty of the autumnal night. The stars spoke to him of
Ilaria; the trees had her name unuttered on their lips. What was this
woman that she should bring such bitterness into his life? Were there
not others in the world as fair as she, with lips as red and eyes as
deep? Strangeness--mystery! She was one with the moon; a goddess
shrined in the gloom of forests dim. White and immaculate, beautifully
strange, she seemed as an elf child fated to doom men to despair, to
their own undoing.--
Francesco passed back and found her asleep under the trees. He stood
beside her and gazed on the sleeping face. There was silent faith in
that slumber; trust in the man who guarded her honor. The moonlight
streamed on the upturned face, shining like ivory amid the gleam of
her dusky hair. How white her throat was, how her bosom rose and fell
with the soft white hands folded thereon.
A sudden warmth flooded Francesco's heart; and youth cried in him for
youth. Should this beauty be mured in stone, this red rose be hid by
convent trees? Was she not flesh and blood, born to love and to be
loved in turn,--and what was life but love and desire?
He crept near on his knees, hung over her breathlessly, gazing on her
face. God, but to wake her with one long kiss, to feel those white
arms steal around his neck! They were alone, the two of them, under
the stars. For many minutes Francesco hung there like a man tottering
on a crag betwixt sea and sky. Passion whimpered in him; his heart
beat fast. Yet even as he crouched over Ilaria asleep, some dream or
vision seemed to trouble her soul. Her hands stirred; her lids
quivered; the breath came fast betwixt her lips. A shadow as of pain
passed over the moonlit face. Francesco, kneeling motionless, heard
her utter a low name, saw tears glistening on her cheeks; she was
weeping in her sleep.
Pity, the strong tenderness of his nobler self, his great love for the
girl of his youth, rushed back into the deeps as a wave from a cliff.
He rose up; the shadows flying from his heart as bats afraid of their
own flight. He knelt at the foot of the tree and covered his face with
his hands.--
On the following evening they saw the sea, a wild streak of troubled
gold under the kindling cressets of the west. Beneath them lay a